The Dark Wraith Forums

The Written Peace: Open Forum of March 16, 2007

2007-03-16T01:27:00.000-05:00

Let us try this again.

Your host here at The Dark Wraith Forums has tried his best to publish a nice open thread while preparing this site for transition to a new publishing platform. Google has been working mightily to force users of its publishing platform to switch to its so-called "new" Blogger, something I will not do. Google has gone so far as to prevent me from publishing any further articles without signing its new "Terms of Agreement" and allowing their new Blogger to wreak havoc on the code I have been developing over the past two years and several months.

Yesterday, I circumvented the block Google had put into place and published a brief article here. It got deleted rather quickly.

This one won't be.

I have been awaiting the arrival of a more-or-less new computer to replace the poor beast that has labored terribly and with increasing difficulty under the strain I put on it. Fortunately, the new computer arrived yesterday, and I am bringing it up to full power tonight. It is quite a thing to behold, and now I can do things I have been unable to do for quite some time. I can also do a few things I was never able to do before.

As soon as possible, The Dark Wraith Forums will leave the less than competent hands of the folks at Google and go to the NucleusCMS platform, which is the one I use for Big Brass Blog. As I've noted before, a principal concern I have had in switching to Nucleus for this site is that commenters on Nucleus blogs have to use the old Bulletin Board Code (BBC) instead of HTML tags for mark-up. I had been hoping for the development of a module that would allow HTML tags in comments, but that hasn't happened yet.

A significant coding challenge with which I am still struggling is how to make the comments toggle from the main article in Nucleus like I've done here. One of the few good things about the old Blogger publishing platform was that it was so light-weight that I could deploy just about any coding trick I wanted in the so-called "template" (more accurately called the "index file"), and the publishing platform would have no issue with it. That's most decidedly not true of the new Blogger, as I have found out through helping others trying to make the transition. Several members of my blogScream News Wire syndicate have had fits trying to put something as straight-forward as one of the news screens into a new Blogger template. blogScream uses a very standard, harmless version of an object called an IFRAME, something that's been around for a long time; but the new Blogger is having emotional difficulties with it that are creating quite a challenge in maintaining syndicate membership levels.

And speaking of the blogScream News Wire service, it is two years old today, which means it stands as one of the longest running, continuously published news services featuring only blog headlines. Several other services like it have come and gone, but blogScream survives and will continue. Readers who see a blogScream screen on one of more than two dozen blogs across the Blogosphere are seeing headlines from some of the best progressive online writers. Click on a blogScream headline and discover a great blog.

Readers might, by the way, surmise from my two topics above that I am not currently in negotiations to sell blogScream to Google, even though it sometimes seems that every other online publisher of something even halfway interesting is. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that the bandwidth sucking, Chinese censorship enabling, technologically incompetent, wannabe monopolists at Google were to approach me on such a matter, I would be torn between the choices of telling them to bite me or to kiss my backside. Making not one dime of profit is far preferable to garnering a fortune from oafs.

Enough about that.

Over at Big Brass Blog, I published an editorial on what's happening with the stock markets. (That article was supposed to be part of the "Open Forum of March 13, 2007," which never got published here because Google was blocking me from access to the publishing platform).

My assessment of what's going on was typically dour, but let me assure readers here of this: it could get a whole lot worse than even I am describing. In my best judgment, the economic circumstances of many, many people will take a turn for the worse. Most of those people for at least a while will not get their minds around how bad it's getting for them personally. It will take time to sink in. People have been getting used to a modest version of this downward spiral for a few years now; but for most, it's been happening to someone else, and to the extent that it's been happening to them, they have not been making the connection between the world of large-scale financial, economic, and political policies and the consequentially adverse impact of those policies on their own lives.

The understanding of the deep connections will come, but it will come slowly, and it will never be a full understanding for most people. Even though I would like it otherwise, it isn't really all that important that most people will persistently lack a comprehensive grasp of the scope of the incompetence and mendacity that are the very cause of the bad times ahead.

As long as the average American finally figures out who is to blame, all is good. If that average American finally figures out who is to hang, all is even better than good.

Say what you have to say, here. This is an open thread. This post will not get deleted, and the comment facility is working (which it wasn't for my first attempt at this).

Once I've opened the espresso bar and put some snacks out for everyone, maybe we'll have a contest featuring people who try to impersonate a neo-con on the run from a noose. Or maybe we'll do one of those contests where we see who can hold out the longest from laughing when we say things like "The GOP is the party of fiscal restraint."

I did hint over on an open thread at Big Brass Blog that I might get some nude breakdancing going now that I've waxed the dance floor. I'll try to talk Peter of Lone Tree into doing a duo with me on that. If things turn rowdy, we might be able to get some kind of choreographed number going with Minstrel Boy, blackdog, Mr. Goat, and Father Tyme joining me for an interpretive dance to the music from some good, post-Apocalypse movie like Kevin Costner's, The Postman, all of this to the purpose, quite obviously, of ensuring that we still have a good time even as we descend into Hell.

Yes, indeed.

The Dark Wraith does his best to keep people from becoming too pessimistic about the misery, poverty, strife, and absence of acceptable feng shui that may be visited upon us as a nation.

Editorial: The Pardon Problem

2007-03-10T16:52:00.000-05:00

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, formerly the Chief of Staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, was convicted last week on four counts of lying to FBI investigators and a grand jury about when he disclosed to outside sources that Valerie Plame was a non-official cover CIA operative. The most serious of the charges upon which he was convicted was obstruction of justice in the investigation of the circumstances that led to the outing of Ms. Plame, whose husband, Joseph Wilson, had investigated and publicly debunked claims by the Bush Administration that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to procure partially processed uranium from Niger.

The White House had been using the mainstream media, particularly certain reporters like Judith Miller of The New York Times, to promote a largely false case for waging war on Iraq based upon claims by Administration officials that Saddam was seeking to procure, develop, and deploy nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction. Evidence put into the record at Mr. Libby's trial confirms long-standing suspicions and open allegations that the White House, faced with challenges to the credibility of its representations regarding the Iraqi dictator, engaged in a systematic pattern of revenge upon critics who had evidence or belief that the Administration's case was, at best, overblown and, at worst, entirely fabricated. The outing of Ms. Plame sent a strong signal to the intelligence community that taking public exception to the White House would be at the high risk of professional and possibly even personal harm: an exposed undercover operative, as well as his or her contacts, faces permanent, possibly life-threatening dangers after being revealed, and few career employees, especially those working in law enforcement at the national or international level, would be willing to bear such dangers merely to express a judgment in dissent to the highest ranks of a powerful, single-minded, vengeful Executive Branch.

Mr. Libby has vowed through his attorneys to seek a retrial and, failing to obtain such, has vowed to appeal his conviction in federal court. In fact, the appeal of the conviction is automatic; but the point of Mr. Libby's stance is that he will not take the adverse judgment of the federal jury lying down. The arguments he will set forth in seeking retrial are still to be fully formed, as are the arguments that will be placed before the Court of Appeals. As a matter of statistics, the likelihood of Mr. Libby being granted a retrial are slim, and the prospect that an Appeals Court will find substantive error in the trial is even more so.

In the absence of relief in retrial or appeal, Mr. Libby faces a maximum of 25 years in prison and a fine of one million dollars. While it is unlikely that the presiding trial judge, Reggie Walton, will "throw the book" at the convict, it is equally unlikely that Mr. Libby will altogether avoid serving prison time and paying a huge amount of money in fines. As a so-called "white collar criminal," and especially one who served at the behest of a sitting President of the United States, Mr. Libby's prison term would be served in a minimum security facility (with thanks to Richard Crane for pointing out that the camp originally suggested in this article is now closed). While nothing like living as a free person, the convict serving time in such a facility certainly does not suffer many of the deprivations and physical dangers that those serving in higher-security prisons face day in and day out. Although references to 'minimum security golf resorts' abound (one prison administrator describes his minimum security facility as "Camp Cupcake"), Mr. Libby would probably prefer to choose his own golf courses and foursome partners, so he'll make every effort to avoid what would otherwise be a stint in the gilded confines of a minimum security federal prison, comfortable as it might be.

Absent the retrial or overturn of his conviction on appeal, Mr. Libby's only chance of avoiding the certain, permanent stain of being a convicted felon and the near-certain, fairly long pain of confinement is an official pardon for his criminal acts by the President of the United States. Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution reserves to the sitting President the privilege of "Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States except in Cases of Impeachment." The language is clear, simple, and without recourse by those who might object to any particular case in which the President has granted clemency. Presidents, including the incumbent, have used this power with greater or lesser liberality, particularly in the waning days of their Administrations, when personal political backlash would be minimal or when legacy of mercy was being burnished. The constitutional provision is given procedural specificity by Part 1 of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which sets forth the way in which a convict may seek, through the Pardon Attorney in the Department of Justice, clemency from the President. While quite specific, the statute is entirely non-binding upon the President, who may, at his or her discretion, choose to partially or wholly circumvent the process set forth therein. Even at that, though, it is quite likely that Mr. Libby, having exhausted all personal avenues of possible exoneration, would follow the steps prescribed in Title 28, provided President Bush had not already pardoned him.

While many commentators have expressed the opinion that a Presidential pardon (the highest of possible grants of clemency) is almost certain for Mr. Libby, such mercy granted by Mr. Bush would be highly problematic for those in an Administration hoping that the conviction of Mr. Cheney's former Chief of Staff is the official end of the so-called "Valerie Plame Scandal."

Any pardon Mr. Bush would grant Mr. Libby would have to be broad in scope, expressly protecting the latter from future prosecution on charges related to, but separate from, those for which he was just convicted. Such protective wording of a pardon would be along the lines of "...any and all acts carried out in the course of duties." While not rising to the level of so-called "blanket" immunity (exempting the individual from prosecution for any prior acts), such a pardon would have the effect of being an extraordinarily broad "use" immunity to keep any future investigation from leading to charges against Mr. Libby for what he did for and at the behest of higher White House officials. In other words, in any future trials involving White House officials who were part of the smear campaign against Valerie Plame and her husband, Mr. Libby's pardon would have to ensure that he would not face "jeopardy" in both the common and legal senses of that word.

But therein lies the problem: in any future legal proceeding, be it at the level of a federal grand jury, in a District Court, or before a congressional commmittee, Mr. Libby could not decline to respond to any question by invoking the Fifth Amendment, which would otherwise protect him from being compelled to give self-incriminating statements. Mr. Libby could, in fact, not incriminate himself in any manner that would lead to jeopardy for him.

Worse, if he were to decline to speak fully and truthfully anyway, he could at a minimum be charged with contempt of court and quite probably also be charged with obstruction of justice; and no such charges against him would be covered by the Presidential pardon because they were ex post acts in transgression of law and were committed subsequent to his "official duties" since he is no longer an officer of the Executive Branch.

Even future claims by Mr. Libby of defects in his memory of certain events would surely lead to punishment because that defense had already been rejected at trial and could not be revisited by Mr. Libby in future proceedings. To do so would virtually ensure a finding of contempt of court were he to persist in representing that he could not remember when events occurred.

Granted a Presidential pardon, then, Mr. Libby would be an extraordinary legal danger to those in the White House who directed, participated in, or subsequently obstructed the investigation of the Valerie Plame Scandal. A Presidential pardon broad enough to protect Mr. Libby would turn him into a veritable treasure trove of information awaiting responsible congressional and law enforcement authorities willing and able to fully extract from him what he most certainly knows about the possible criminal acts of Administration officials who, in their wildly imaginative case for war, used the power of their offices to wreck those who knew they were lying.

Key, however, to Mr. Libby's possible future role as an informant with no meaningful right against self-incrimination is a thorough investigation, followed by a comprehensive prosecution of all involved. That federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was inadequate to that large, grave, and necessary work must not disabuse other officials of what is not merely their constitutional duty, but is more to the point their moral obligation to right this one of many wrongs committed by an Administration unfettered by any internal sense of its own responsibility to adhere to the rule of law.

The Dark Wraith encourages President George W. Bush, in the spirit of mercy and friendship, to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Analysis: The Economics of Wreckage, Part One

2007-03-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

This is the first of a three-part series on macroeconomic financial effects of the Presidency of George W. Bush. On Tuesday, February 27, 2007, stock markets around the world dropped precipitously, led into the vortex by China, where the Shanghai Stock Exchange lost almost nine percent of its value. Major stock indices in the U.S. followed suit, wiping out recent gains that had brought forth breathless praise from the mainstream media about near-record highs that were nothing more than a brief, illusory departure from the pattern of abysmal real returns that common stock portfolios have offered investors over the past six years.

This first part of the series is the latest in a continuing program of index portfolio analyses that have been an on-going project here at The Dark Wraith Forums. Readers who have followed previous installments may recall that negative or miserably weak positive returns on equity index investments have been the typical outcome of these calculations in the past. Only in the last installment, published just after the sixth anniversary of President Bush's inauguration in 2001, did even one of the major indices, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, register a barely positive annualized real rate of return over the six years, and the decline in that and the other U.S. indices served to bring all three of the averages surveyed here back into line with the overall negative performance they have displayed over the tenure of the Bush Administration.

This first part, then, is a reminder to all who would offer even a modicum of praise for the Bush Administration's record as the steward of the American economy. Financial markets do not lie. They do not fabricate numbers, nor do they manipulate quantitative outcomes to suit the public relations purposes of the neo-conservatives; instead, the inflation-adjusted returns on investment in the three major stock indices of the United States calculated and presented below deliver the stark, objective assessment generated from trillions and trillions of trades involving nearly incomprehensible amounts of money: the Bush Administration has been an engine of financial depletion of the value of claims on ownership in American companies publicly listed by the three largest, most comprehensive stock indices.

The second part of this series will provide a standard, relatively simple macroeconomic model of the distribution of spending that comprises the total national income of a country, and that model will be applied to explain the way in which the United States government has financed hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit spending through the use of its trade deficits, particularly those it has run with China, which has for years deliberately manipulated the exchange rate of its currency, the yuan, with the U.S. dollar to the end of causing American greenbacks to flow to the central bank of China, which then used those dollars to finance the staggering budget deficits the Republicans have created year after year.

The third part of the series will review the dynamics by which the U.S. trade deficits with China have fostered the conditions the Bush Administration exploited to maintain abnormally low tax rates concomitantly with profligate spending, particularly on wars of opportunity. That third installment will conclude with the explanation of why the Shanghai stock market necessarily had to crash and what will be the likely consequences of recent economic events on the long-term prospects of a United States weakened by the irresponsible incompetence of the Bush Administration and its Republican cohorts who, until just recently, served as the exclusive, if unworthy, stewards of a nation that could have been far better off than it will be as the incontrovertible result of their time in power.

Responsibility Assigned
George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001. Until January 4, 2007, when the Democrats took control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the Republicans had controlled both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, save for a brief period in mid- to late-2001 when a Republican-turned-Independent caused an even split in the Senate. Over the past six years, then, the financial house of this country has been in the virtually uninterrupted hands of the GOP, during which time the federal government went from running growing budget surpluses in the last years of the Clinton Administration to bleeding hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink every year under President George W. Bush and his congressional allies.

The Republican Party, through its legislators in Congress and its President in the White House, has overseen the abysmal performance of the U.S. stock markets, which represent the overwhelming bulk of the value of all public ownership of American corporations. It is in the stocks traded on these exchanges that much of the wealth of the nation is invested by everything from huge pension and mutual funds to individual speculators.

The GOP has no one but its own elected representatives to blame, notwithstanding any possible obfuscation by its elected representatives or their apologists in the mainstream media or among the tap-dancing ranks of the Right-wing punditry brigade. Republican economics has been a failure: it is based upon budget deficit-driven fiscal stimulus financed by trade deficits that have had the effect of causing the sell-off of the American capital base, which America's trading partners have then lent back to the United States government to finance its budget shortfalls. The irresponsible policy pursued by Mr. Bush, the Republicans in Congress, and their neo-conservative pseudo-intellectual backers is a twist on Keynesian economic policy prescriptions, but true Keynesians would never have abided fiscal health-draining deficits for more than a short period of time, and they never would have even so much as suggested hocking the American economy to an enormous, mercantilist-Communist country that has cynically, systematically distorted exchange rates to draw American dollars and jobs from America's shores.

Index Portfolio Performance during the Bush Administration to Date
As of (and including) Friday, March 2, 2007, George W. Bush had been President of the United States 2,233 days. As pointed out above, responsibility for the huge federal budget deficits year after year that have hallmarked the rule of the Republicans rests squarely with their party, its legislators in Congress, and the policy-makers in the White House, including George W. Bush, himself. Similarly, the Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for what is shown below to have been an unconscionable erosion of the purchasing power of dollars invested in the three largest U.S. stock indices over the six years that George W. Bush has been President of the United States.

From the first day of trading, January 22, 2001, after President Bush became the 43rd President of the United States, until the last trading day, March 2, 2007, before the publication date of this article, the performance of the major stock markets—measured by the index portfolios of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite—has been abysmal: all three indices have delivered negative real returns on investment over the term of the past six years.

January 22, 2001, was the first day of trading after Mr. Bush became President. The three major stock market indices stood at the following levels at the close of trading on that day:

January 22, 2001, Index Closing Values
Dow Jones Industrial Average	10,578.24
Standard & Poor's 500	1,342.90
NASDAQ Composite	2,757.91

At the close of trading on Friday, March 2, 2007, these same three averages stood at the following levels:

March 2, 2007, Index Closing Values
Dow Jones Industrial Average	12,114.10
Standard & Poor's 500	1,387.17
NASDAQ Composite	2,368.00

If an investor were to have formed a portfolio based upon each of these three indices and managed each portfolio in terms of composition and balance to mirror the relevant index, the investor would have earned the following total nominal returns on investment over the 2,233 days from January 22, 2001, to March 2, 2007:

Total Nominal Portfolio Returns from 1/22/2001 to 3/2/2007
Dow Jones Industrial Average	14.52%
Standard & Poor's 500	3.30%
NASDAQ Composite	-14.14%

Expressing these returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the nominal results just presented are as follows:

Annualized Nominal Portfolio Returns from 1/22/2001 to 3/2/2007
Dow Jones Industrial Average	2.24%
Standard & Poor's 500	0.53%
NASDAQ Composite	-2.46%

The above are nominal (that is, "not corrected for inflation") results. Taking into account the erosion of purchasing power (that is, "the effect of inflation") on portfolio values over the holding period requires adjusting each of the current values to its equivalent purchasing power value on January 22, 2001. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index data for January 2001, the CPI stood at 175.1, and for January 2007, the CPI stood at 202.4. The February 2007 figure can be estimated by various methods, and here, a conservative projection of 202.76 is derived from the three-month moving average of the CPI, implying an annualized inflation rate for the February of 2.2 percent, based upon the average of the annualized inflation rates for the previous three months.

Expressing the closing index portfolio values as of Friday, March 2, 2007, in terms of their January 2001 purchasing power equivalents provides the following results:

March 2, 2007, Index Values in January 2001 Purchasing Power Value
Dow Jones Industrial Average	10,461.55
Standard & Poor's 500	1,197.94
NASDAQ Composite	2,044.97

The total real return on investment for each portfolio is then the quotient of the January 2001 index value when divided into the adjusted March 2, 2007, value:

Total Real Portfolio Returns from 1/22/2001 to 3/2/2007
Dow Jones Industrial Average	-1.10%
Standard & Poor's 500	-10.79%
NASDAQ Composite	-25.85%

Finally, expressing these real returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the total real return results just presented are as follows:

Annualized Real Portfolio Returns from January 22, 2001, to March 2, 2007
Dow Jones Industrial Average	-0.18%
Standard & Poor's 500	-1.85%
NASDAQ Composite	-4.78%

The total and annualized real returns to the selected portfolios are presented below in graphical form:

As is plainly evident, real returns on investment in three large U.S. stock indices, representing as they do the majority of ownership value in publicly traded U.S. corporations, have been negative. Investing in even the very largest, presumably safest public corporations would have led to an actual loss of money in real terms, and that loss would have been worse by investing in smaller-cap public companies through the NASDAQ Composite.

In practical terms, the numbers above mean this: an investor putting $100 on January 20, 2001, into a portfolio of the Dow Jones 30 Industrials and maintaining the index balance until March 2, 2007, would now have the purchasing power of $98.90; an investor doing the same but investing in the Standard & Poor's 500 would now have the purchasing power of $89.21; and an investor doing the same but investing in the NASDAQ Composite index would now have the purchasing power of $74.15.

Investing in stocks, particularly in well-balanced portfolios, is supposed to create capital appreciation in real terms over a long period of holding time; instead, over the course of the Bush Administration, investments in well-balanced, standard index portfolios have resulted in real purchasing power erosion of dollars invested.

This is objective evidence, accumulating over more than six years, of fiscal mismanagement on a scale that will be felt for generations to come. This, then, is objective evidence of a degraded future for the United States, whose citizens will labor mightily under the after-effects of economic degradation caused by men and women in Washington who posed as prudent, fiscal conservatives, but instead acted in a more economically reckless manner than any American leadership in decades.

This series will continue in the next installment with a survey of the national income allocation model, which will be used to explain the way in which the Republicans propelled the economy far too long on funds borrowed from overseas investors who got their money to make the loans by bleeding the American economy of both its greenbacks and its jobs.

The Dark Wraith trusts that readers will stay tuned.

Editorial: Twit Journalism and the Professor from Hell

2007-02-28T00:32:00.000-05:00

Although I shall within the next several days address at length the world-wide stock market crash that occurred today, I herewith take the opportunity to briefly and succinctly deal with a news article on this matter written by CNNMoney.com senior writer Alexandra Twin. I quote the first two paragraphs below and ask readers to note carefully the very last sentence.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks slumped Tuesday on worries about economic growth at home and abroad, sending the Dow industrials to their biggest point drop since the day the market reopened after the Sept. 11 attacks.

A big decline in Chinese stocks, weakness in some key readings on the U.S. economy and news that Vice President Dick Cheney was the apparent target in a Taliban suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan all fueled the selling on Wall Street.

What follows is my very brief response, offered as it is from my position as a professor who turns without warning into a roaring bitch when journalistic stupidity passes a certain threshold.

No, the world-wide stock market crash that happened on Tuesday, February 27, 2007, had nothing whatsoever to do with a suicide bomber who killed a bunch of people in Afghanistan in a failed and futile attempt to assassinate U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney. Absolutely nothing. To ascribe a planet-wide slide of stock markets that slashed the net assessed values of claims on residual cashflow anywhere from four to nine percent to "weakness in some key readings on the U.S. economy and news that Vice President Dick Cheney was the apparent target in a Taliban suicide bombing attack in Afghanistan" is evidence that CNNMoney.com believes—or is at the very least cynically willing to offer to its readers—the utterly ridiculous: a wholly false and imaginary world of the 21st Century where the markets of tens and hundreds of billions of trades totaling trillions and trillions of dollars stand in rapt awe of a slate of transitory U.S. government statistics (some of which had not even been released when the globe-spanning crash got underway) and a trouble-making, incompetent American Vice President.

The markets of the world weren't waiting to jump off a cliff if bad inventory numbers got pumped out by the U.S. government; the markets of the world weren't waiting to claw their chests open if Dick Cheney heard a big boom; and Wednesday, quite fortunately, I can assure you that not one of my business or economics students will be so fresh as to give me an explanation like that when I ask about the forces that caused the stock markets to slide as they did on Tuesday. That's because my students, even the rank freshmen who've been in my classes only about a month, know better than to give me stupid, simplistic, vapid explanations, particularly when I come in looking like I'm ready to eat someone's head off because I've been reading poundingly corny news analysis the night before.

Sadly, my students' unwillingness to spout the ridiculous means not one of them will ever qualify to become a "senior writer" for CNNMoney.com, where news analysis is predicated, first and foremost, on thinking like a twit and then displaying the wretched product of that thinking for all the world to read.

The Dark Wraith just winces at what passes for an educated financial journalist these days.

Special Blog Post: The locusts shall not prevail.

2007-02-24T12:38:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago, two bloggers who had been hired by the John Edwards for President campaign became the target of criticism by Bill Donohue, the leader of a religious organization called the Catholic League. One of those two bloggers is Melissa McEwan, who uses the pen name Shakespeare's Sister on her blog of the same name. Ms. McEwan is a friend of mine. We became acquainted because we were both commenters at AMERICAblog, and we ultimately began our own work as Weblog publishers and writers at about the same time. Ms. McEwan, in fact, reached out to find me after we had stopped commenting at AMERICAblog: she wanted me to know about her new blog, and she wanted to know what I was doing. It was through her generous effort, then, that we became reunited in our separate but mutual efforts to speak out against the Bush Administration, the religious zealots, the neo-conservatives, and all the others who have made this century open in such a grim and awful way.

In Mr. Donohue's inflammatory press release condemning the two women Mr. Edwards had hired, he declared that the Edwards campaign "has no choice but to fire them immediately." His press release and subsequent comments deriding Ms. McEwan gave members of his organization (and perhaps others sympathetic to his concerns) what they perceived as license to flood her with e-mail, some of which was violently threatening, hateful, menacing, and altogether unworthy of anyone who would pose to speak on behalf of an organization affiliated with any Christian church committed to the New Covenant. Whether or not Mr. Donohue accepts responsibility for the cyber-violence his condemnation of her brought about, he was not merely the catalyst; he was the instigator.

The much-touted constitutional protection of citizen speech is a right to the extent that the Constitution does not recognize the government's role in restricting it. This leaves to the federal legislature, the several states, the civil society, and the courts such responsibility as necessarily exists for defining the distinction between speech and conduct and the setting forth the boundaries where speech becomes actionable under civil and/or criminal law. Speech that is an incitement to riot is not without sanction because it interferes with the compelling interest of the government in maintaining civil order; speech that endangers others in demonstrable ways is subject to scrutiny because of the compelling interest of the government in protecting its citizens. Where the line is drawn is always a matter of controversy, and that line shifts over time as new dimensions of speech and innovative experiments in existing modes of communication arise.

Mr. Donohue cannot simply declare that his was protected speech: demonstrably, it led at a minimum to civil assault upon Ms. McEwan, this being the case because "assault" involves a reasonable belief on the part of the victim that she is in imminent, personal danger. Mr. Donohue had created a sense in his followers that theirs was a threatened—indeed, persecuted—lot and, because of the perilous condition of their right to worship as they wished, they would consequentially have not merely the option of reactive violence to perceived threats, but compelling religious duty to react as necessary to protect their religion.

I shall not leave to the likes of men like Mr. Donohue their sentiment that they may continue to terrorize those whose voices are strongly contrary to their own. As a matter of fact and evidence, he was the proximate initiator of events that led to cyber-violence. Whether or not he believes that his god will reward him for what he loosed upon Ms. McEwan and the other blogger by describing them as "trash-talking bigots," responsible agents of the civil society must take notice and respond within the bounds of law and efficacy; and ultimately, that civil society, through its responsible, concerned agents, must compel both statutory and common law to address those who would use the Internet to incite individuals to become a menacing mob.

As an important note with regard to the above, I have found no instance of an official statement by the Catholic League condemning the threatening e-mail messages received by Ms. McEwan. Neither have I found an official statement by that organization ordering its member to cease such activities. Indeed, I have found no spoken or written evidence that any official of the League took advantage of what was happening to counsel the membership on rightful action in accordance with Christian teachings. Should such firm, resolute, and forceful efforts to stop the mob violence have been widely promulgated, I shall amend this article to include praise of that work.

Cyber-attacks come in many forms. Some, like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and spambot slams, are highly technical and seemingly impersonal, although some of them are not nearly as random as might first appear. My servers have labored occasionally under these types of assaults. The cyber-attack on Ms. McEwan was far more obviously personal and infinitely more frightening; but it was, at its essence, the very same type of strategy with a very similar objective: swarm and silence the target.

Mr. Donohue's followers who went after Ms. McEwan were extraordinary in their numbers. In that way, they were just like the multiple sources in a distributed denial of service attack; and similarly, their objective was to drive Ms. McEwan from a position of visibility and influence.

In the end, they succeeded, but only nominally: Ms. McEwan's voice lives on as Shakespeare's Sister; and, if anything, Mr. Donohue has made her influence greater if unofficial. She need no longer concern herself with parsing her language to meet the needs of John Edwards as he fashions himself a respectable candidate who is "personally offended" by what he otherwise should have tolerated were he to really want strong, feminist thinking within his inner circle of advisers and assistants.

For my own part, I am relieved that I no longer have to consider mincing words about John Edwards, who thinks he is centering himself politically even as he panders to interests in ways that I find altogether troubling. While I most likely would not have held my criticism of Mr. Edwards even if Ms. McEwan had continued to serve as a technical adviser to his campaign, I now no longer have to worry about whether or not she would take flak for continuing to associate with me as I escalated my own critical rhetoric.

Distributed denial of service cyber-attackers and the vitriolic e-mail attackers are of the same breed: They are locusts. Stopping one of them does no good; stopping a dozen or a hundred of them is useless; stopping a thousand of them is trivial. They just keep coming and coming. It is not in their individual actions that they do their damage, but rather in their collective menace, their smothering erosion, that they cause their great harm.

They swarm, and in the time of their swarming, the victim believes that the onslaught will never end absent his or her full-scale retreat.

Long before I came to be a writer here in this venue, I wrote on message boards. My words were far harsher than they are in this time of my life. When finally the time came that I had offended several who could call the locusts down upon me, I backed down and completely disappeared from the Internet. There was nothing else I could do. More importantly from a personal perspective, I had the ungodly, awful, penetrating sense that the attacks upon me would never end and that, sooner or later, one or more of those violent people writing to me and about me were going to find me and kill me. At one point, I wished that it would happen just so the dread of waiting would be at its end. Every light shining in my window at night was the end coming; every time the phone rang, it might be one of the maniacs; every car that followed me for too long on a darkened road was the end about to happen.

Was all of this my own, personal, delusional paranoia? In fact, I was followed late at night on several nights; property of mine was destroyed; and other, much worse things that I shall not share were visited upon me. I literally, honestly wanted to be at the end of myself as a living person. I had been humiliated, I had been wrecked. Most tellingly, all the moral support, all the kind and generous words I received, meant nothing.

And, of course, I was silenced.

The locusts swarmed; and thereby, those who had summoned them won.

Never again, though.

Let me make it entirely clear that, while I can take care of myself—I have made it one of my principal life endeavors—to ensure my ability to strike back destructively against cyber-attackers, this is not what other potential victims should have to do. Progressive bloggers, both individually and collectively, should not have to live with an intimidating sense that they might be targeted, attacked, and wrecked by Right-wing secular and religious zealots. Extremists are an expanding ball of fire that just keeps right on billowing with every drop of blood they draw. Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Bill Donohue, and dozens of other significant and minor invokers of the swarm thrive on their minions who pay them to spew hate and who would gleefully leap into the air to join a swarm against some defenseless victim.

Countervailance against the swarm is not within the scope of most individual bloggers. It must be more than a group effort; it must, in fact, be an official effort of a scope, funding, and gravity commensurate with the threat the Right-wing zealots pose to civil society.

That means those who would benefit from our progressive voices, Democrats and moderate Republicans alike, must take responsibility for ensuring that the netroots, which will become more and more important to them as time goes by, can function without fear of cyber-attacks.

Chet Scoville of Vanity Press recently published a post, cross-posted at Big Brass Blog, in which he cited an article by Jeffrey Feldman advocating the formation by the Democratic National Committee of a full-fledged task group dedicated to "...protecting Democratic candidates... from the cancer of organized Republican smear." Specific responsibilities of the task group are laid out, including "Republican smear campaign forecasts; Status of ongoing (smear) campaigns; Framing and Keyword analysis; Background research (presumably on known and suspected smear instigators); Strategy and tactic suggestions; Internet activist reports..."

Mr. Scoville adds to Mr. Feldman's fine list the importance of every Democratic campaign having its own version of this task group. This is important because the work of the national group would have to be articulated and augmented by any particular candidate to operationalize meaningful action and response to smear campaigns. Invoking the model and terminology of Robert Altemeyer (recently discussed by Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword), who has extensively researched what he calls "Right-wing Authoritarians" and "Social-Dominance Oriented" individuals, I commented on Mr. Scoville's article in part as follows:

The Southern Poverty Law Center offers the model for cataloguing, monitoring, and tracking hate groups. What is being proposed in your article seems at first blush far more ambitious, if only because the source of these hate attacks appears more ubiquitous. Actually, it is not: the so-called "Right-Wing Authoritarian Followers" comprise maybe about a quarter of the population of this country, but the overwhelming majority of them are dormant unless harangued into action.

We have seen this before: huge numbers of RWA-F lie dormant until a Social Dominance-Oriented/Right-Wing Authoritarian (SDO/RWA) "double high" (as such a person is called in the literature) draws them to action. In historical terms, we saw this with a certain group of evangelicals who were brought to bear by Jerry Falwell; we saw it with Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum (with the Equal Rights Amendment); and we saw it again several times in the '90s, and one last time quite starkly with the thugs who laid siege to the facilities where Florida election officials were trying to commence a recount of the 2000 Presidential Election votes.

The RWA Followers are not dangerous unless and until they are bid to action by a small core of leader types, generally either financially well-off, themselves (as with Melton Scaif), or capable of generating large amounts of money (as with Pat Robertson, Sun Myung Moon, and Paul Weyrich).

As far as mitigating their influence is concerned, to some extent, it is a matter of open exposure. The RWA Followers are actually rather immune to public humiliation, but some (not all, but some) of the SDOs that set them in motion are fairly sensitive to the limelight, especially when it turns against them and they cannot cloister themselves against awareness of it.

To the extent that wide-ranging exposure of their action is not enough to slow them down, though, the next step is to move against them in the courts. This includes suits alleging torts, particularly torts of interference with business relationships. It also includes suits alleging defamation. Finally, it also includes an all-out effort to bring civil RICO charges to bear on them and their lieutenants.

To this last point, there will come a time when we must clarify in our own minds that this isn't "just politics"; this is, instead, an organized criminal enterprise that has spanned well more than a decade and used hundreds of millions of dollars to the purpose not of benefiting the democratic experience of these United States, but instead of interfering with and degrading it.

However, that comment having been made, this work, as important as it is, cannot be the extent of dealing with those who would cause the violence Ms. McEwan suffered. It really doesn't even address what can happen to progressive bloggers unless the umbrella of protection extends past the candidates, themselves, and reaches deep into the progressive Blogosphere.

In fact, an official task group at the national level cannot succeed unless that task group uses as one of its primary resources the bloggers who could very well be at the shock front of any smear campaign. We are the ones who see the ebbs and flows of trolls; we are the ones who get the e-mails that we actually open and read; we are the ones who look at our hit counters for nuances of increased traffic; we are the ones who read the details of our incoming visitor traffic reports, meaning we can often see the source that has referenced trolls to our sites.

And, as time goes on, it is we the progressive bloggers who will know far better than candidates and their suit-and-tie type of technical advisers the terrain here in cyberspace. It is we who will know the lay of the land and the threat level presented by trolls and other harsh commenters. It is we who will take the messages of presidential candidates and echo them across the electronic world. Unlike the mainstream media, which for the most part uses the Internet as an after-market publication platform, we bloggers are often the wells from which arise into the electronic information stream the character and quality of candidates through what they are saying that the mainstream media might very well be trivializing or even ignoring.

But it goes beyond merely "tracking" Right-wing smear campaign organizers. Unless and until the necessary resources are brought to bear in law enforcement actions by those who know how to use such instrumentalities, the Right will just keep on calling the swarms.

That means the DNC or whoever would form a full-blown task group has to deal with men like Mr. Donohue by filing complaints with the IRS for the violation by the Catholic League of prohibitions on issue advocacy by 501(c)(3) groups. That means aggregating threatening e-mail messages on behalf of targeted bloggers and moving that menacing literature to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That means having attorneys who can issue letters to the smear campaign organizers laying the blame at their feet and demanding that they issue public statements ordering their followers to stop. That means, when those smear campaign initiators smirk and say there's nothing they can do about it, hauling them into civil court and hammering away at them until they get tired of the litigation pain and learn how to control themselves when they write and speak. That means fighting back as a concerted, sustained, unrelenting, opposing force.

That's how you stop the locusts.

If the Democratic National Committee and the candidates haven't the interest to provide for our protection under some national task force dedicated to dealing with smear campaigns, then the DNC and the Democratic candidates have done themselves every bit as much harm as they have allowed to happen to us. And if the Democratic Party and those candidates believe they can come to us thinking we'll hand them free air time, they simply must understand that we will accommodate them only to the extent that they grasp our significance to the world of tomorrow. If they cannot bring themselves to stand up for us, they should not be surprised when we deploy our own net of defenses and then ask them, "Where exactly were you when the locusts came to pick us off one by one?"

Likely, the Democratic National Committee will protect itself, and each of the major Democratic candidates will protect himself or herself. Those candidates will still come to us, hat in hand, expecting us to speak favorably of them and use our valuable resources to their own political gain. In that event, they will find this: learning how to survive in a world of hate—be it on the violent streets of urban America or in the streams of cyber-violence in the online world—means learning how to grow up strong, mean, and unforgiving, especially of cowards who could have helped but would rather stand in the bright sunlight waving to the adoring crowds of sheep.

Whatever choices are made by others, though, one thing is certain for us, the progressive bloggers out here in the field.

The locusts shall not prevail.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

Special Video Post: Statement

2007-02-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

YouTube public URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Wd4yIOeKY

Click here to view the video as a WMV file (42 seconds, 912 kilobytes)

This YouTube video may be reposted with attribute.

Principles of Economics: Origins of the Discipline, Video Edition

2007-02-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

Updated 2/16/07 At the beginning of each semester in Principles of Economics classes, I deliver a lecture entitled "Origins of the Discipline." This lecture is given in both traditional classroom settings and in telecourses broadcast to satellite campuses. I am herewith offering that lecture from the beginning of the current semester as a multi-part YouTube video for readers here at The Dark Wraith Forums: Part 1 was posted Monday, February 12, 2007, Part 2 was posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007, Part 3 was posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 and Part 4, the final segment, has now been posted as of February 16, 2007. All four parts taken together constitute an edited version of the entirety of my "Origins of the Discipline" lecture. Below each YouTube frame is a link to the WMV format file of the video for those who would prefer to download it for viewing that way.

The Dark Wraith encourages readers to enjoy.

Click here for the WMV format version of Part 1 (4:30, 12.3 Mb).

Click here for the WMV format version of Part 2 (9:55, 11.7 Mb).

Click here for the WMV format version of Part 3 (9:54, 34.8 Mb).

Click here for the WMV format version of Part 4 (4:31, 15.4 Mb).

Special Analysis: More Practical Math for the New American Century

2007-02-09T23:12:00.000-05:00

The August 5, 2005, article, "Practical Math for the New American Century," published here at The Dark Wraith Forums provided readers with some elementary mathematical tools for calculating the destructive force of a nuclear device based upon its yield.

The possible use of nuclear devices has returned to the news with rumors of an impending airstrike to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities to thwart its potential use of such enriched uranium to build nuclear weapons. Although top-level Iranian officials have denied that the uranium they are processing will be used for anything other than peaceful purposes, concerns in Washington and Israel have led some analysts to conclude that either Israel or the United States is planning to bomb the Iranian nuclear fuel production plants. According to the Defense Department, the sites where uranium enrichment is now underway are deep underground. They are essentially massive, hardened, underground bunkers protected by as much as 70 feet of concrete and steel overlain by another 50 feet of earth. To destroy them with conventional weapons alone would be impossible, so the presumption is that whoever carries out the attack would have to use nuclear bombs to effect the necessary level of damage.

CNN.com is reporting that Iran's highest leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is concerned enough about the prospect of attack that he, himself, has spoken out, threatening to mount counter-attacks on U.S. interests and assets across the world should the United States be involved in or spearhead a strike against Iran. His concerns are perhaps enhanced by what appears to be an unwillingness even among U.S. President George W. Bush's critics to take a military strike against Iran off the table of possible responses to Tehran's alleged refusal to comply with United Nations demands that it halt its nuclear fuels production. In fact, the relatively popular U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, campaigning in Israel for the Democratic nomination, joined rivals John McCain and Mitt Romney at a public teleconference in suburban Tel Aviv to make clear his willingness to use force if discussions with Iran fail, hinting ominously, "[A]ll options must remain on table." Aljazeera described Edwards' speech supporting Israel as "shockingly bellicose," indicating that analysts in the Arab media believe Iran should not hope for a lessening of its fears of an attack merely because new voices from an American political party in opposition to the Bush Administration are entering public debate on Middle Eastern matters.

While some analyses are keyed to a U.S.-led attack on Iran, others predict that, in the absence of swift action by the Americans, the strike will be carried out by Israel, quite possibly supported by the United States. A recent post at the blog BlondeSense highlighted a March 2007 article in Vanity Fair by Craig Unger, who described in ominous terms rumors about a coming attack on Iran. In the comments to the post at BlondeSense, the role Israel would play was mentioned. Specifically, the range of bomb yields in the Israeli nuclear inventory was mentioned, with allusion being made to the Jewish State's blockbuster 400 kiloton devices and its enhanced radiation warheads.

In response, I offered a summary primer on the means by which Israel would destroy Iranian nuclear fuels production facilities in a nuclear attack. Below is an edited and expanded version of my comment, which will be followed by the application of some mathematical calculations to add a bit more of a technical, quantitative feel to what may come.

Israel will not use weapons in the 400 kiloton yield range. That would be something along the lines of nuclear overkill.

The ideal devices for use on Iran's nuclear fuels production facilities are in the one kiloton range, which is about one-fifteenth of the yield of the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and provides sufficient destructive force for the Iranian targets without the problem of overkill. Bombs with yields like this are quite likely in the Israeli arsenal, although they might very well be referenced as "enhanced radiation" devices, since that term is sometimes used rather loosely. In my article, "Practical Math for the New American Century" [linked previously], I explained that there are three principal sources of destructive power in a nuclear bomb: overpressure, heat, and radiation. As the yield of a device increases, the overpressure component comes to dominate the other two in terms of kill radius. Hence, with very low-yield weapons, the kill radius of the radiation globe will be considerably larger than that of the concussive force (or "wind," if you will). Thus, very low-yield weapons (around a kiloton or less) will be "hot radiation" bombs, doing destructive overpressure damage at a smaller scale than the thermal and radiative components. To some extent, these make for ideal "bunker busters" when used in combination with conventional bunker busters because the latter can be used to excavate a crater above a hardened underground facility, then the former can be dropped into the crater, which will focus overpressure and compromise the structural integrity of the targeted facility. The hot radiation serves to cause virtually instantaneous ignition of anything even remotely combustible within the building itself via the breaches created by the overpressure component, acting as it does to essentially "crack the can" so the intense heat can enter and start what is effectively a secondary fireball in the contained interior of the place. Everything gets destroyed, and it's not so much by the explosive force, although the whole ceiling might theoretically come down, but rather by the baking at temperatures above flashpoint for everything that's non-metallic. As far as the metal equipment, like the centrifuge components, is concerned, that will be in a thermal environment quite possibly hot enough to melt just about everything.

Given that the facility is all underground, the whole place becomes a tomb—a very hot, highly radioactive tomb, but a tomb, nonetheless.

In the aforementioned "Practical Math for the New American Century," I derived the equations for the kill zones of the three types of destructive power of a nuclear device. Again, they are as follows, with associated lethality thresholds indicated:

blast: 4.6 pounds per square inch of overpressure;
thermal radiation: 8 Calories per cm² (creating 3rd degree burns);
nuclear radiation: 500 rem.

The equations of kill radii (in kilometers) associated with "optimal height" detonation are such:

kill radius of blast = (Y_r)^0.41
kill radius of thermal radiation = (Y_r)^0.33
kill radius of nuclear radiation = (Y_r)^0.19,

where Y_r is the "yield relative" to a 2.5 kiloton device. Hence, we would use as the yield relative for a one kiloton nuclear bomb,

Y_r = 1÷2.5 = 0.4,

meaning that a one kiloton nuclear bomb has 40 percent of the yield of the baseline 2.5 kiloton weapon.

Before proceeding, it must be acknowledged that the equations above would be somewhat off for one kiloton devices detonated at ground or below-ground levels, since, as noted, the equations assume "optimal height" bursts. A little more specifically, if a nuclear device explodes in a crater already formed by a conventional bunker-buster bomb, the overpressure directly beneath the blast will be somewhat higher, as will the thermal component. The radiation globe will be contained laterally by the walls of the previously formed crater, forcing what would otherwise be a spherical shell in an airburst to deform into more of a fountain-like plume emanating from the crater. This effect, of course, will be observed with the blast wave and with the thermal shell, too; but the blast will be particularly affected since underneath the explosion presumably is a 70-foot thick stratum of concrete protecting the facility under attack. This hard surface will reflect a considerable amount of the overpressure upward. The hope, of course, is that, in so doing, the structural integrity of the concrete will suffer catastrophic failure or compromise clear through to the open chamber underneath, thereby allowing the fireball and some of the radiation to enter and do crippling damage.

These considerations having been noted, below are the calculations of the kill zones for the three destructive forces of a one kiloton nuclear device:

kill radius of blast = (0.4)^0.41 = .69 km = 2264 ft
kill radius of thermal radiation = (0.4)^0.33= .74 km = 2428 ft
kill radius of nuclear radiation = (0.4)^0.19 = .84 km = 2756 ft

Readers will notice that, unlike with a large-yield nuclear bomb, whose wide-ranging destructive power is caused principally by the blast wave, fatal heat and radiation from a low-yield nuclear device cover a wider area than does the blast wave. This is why low-yield devices are sometimes generically referred to as "enhanced radiation" devices or "dirty bombs": their largest kill zone is the one caused by the radiation from them.

Addressing the immediate problem of destroying an underground nuclear facility, then, using a low-yield nuclear bomb is not to the purpose of "blowing up" the place; it is, instead, to the purpose of blasting it open so it can then be torched and irradiated.

In a little more graphic, if wholly expository, detail, here's what should happen. A conventional bunker-buster device is detonated on the earth above the facility to form a crater, probably no more than 20 to 50 feet deep, into which the nuclear bomb is then dropped. When the nuclear device detonates, the blast wave will immediately create a spherical shell of wind, but that shell will be instantly deformed by the walls of the crater and the earth and concrete beneath, which will act as reflectors to create a complex set of waves inside and over the crater. A considerable amount of force will be exerted downward, of course, excavating earth above the concrete and then damaging the concrete, itself. The reflected pneumatic pressure will pump upward, but will encounter the echoing blast waves around and above it as they are moving back and forth and up. Those waves will cause some of the energy that had been reflected upward from the initial pounding on the concrete to reflect back downward, again hitting the already breaking concrete, further compromising it. Ideally, the concrete—reinforced as it is with steel girders—will be breaking away, with the chunks, pieces, and dust getting swept up in the "mushroom cloud" billowing out of the hole in the ground. The thermal energy of the nuclear explosion will be glazing the concrete, making it more brittle, and melting the steel girders.

All of this should happen in a period of considerably less than a second. The jackhammer effect of the overpressure, along with the heat being delivered to the concrete, might not create a catastrophic collapse of the entire ceiling of the underground bunker, but it should be more than sufficient to open a gaping hole through which the thermal energy can enter at a temperature of several thousand degrees, more than enough to burn anything of importance inside the chamber. Overpressure echoes will be pushing in, too, feeding the ball of fire roaring through the interior of the building. Radiation in the form of subatomic particles, ions, and isotopes of various kinds will deliver a thin plasma wave coursing through the raging wind and hellish fire.

The effect of all this should be utter destruction of equipment and people in the underground facility. The walls will cave under the blast and heat; the glass, metal, and wiring will all melt; and any humans unlucky enough to be anywhere inside will be baked to ash. The irradiation will ensure that whatever remains of the bunker is unapproachable for years, if not decades.

And whatever aspirations Iran had to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful or other purposes will be at an end.

The Dark Wraith trusts that readers have benefited from this educational article.

Wraith Classics: The Trials

2007-02-06T22:23:00.000-05:00

As those who are regular visitors to this site probably know, before I began The Dark Wraith Forums, I wrote extensively in the Medieval History forum of About.com, where my nom de plume was Selig Wraith. The Old English word selig meant "blessed," and from it we get the modern word "silly," one of several words from our mother tongue that once described an inner quality, but that eventually came to be associated with the outer behavior associated with that inner quality. Another fine example is the Old English word nic, which used to mean "foolish," but now is the word "nice."

My principal venue in the Medieval History forum at About.com was on a thread called "A Once and Future Language" that I started so I could teach about Old, Middle, and Early Modern English, as well as discuss trends and possible directions English might take over the next few hundred years. I commented on other threads as well, especially when discussions turned to matters that might have something or other to do with language.

The entire forum became somewhat contentious after a while because of issues like the corruption of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church. Several commenters, using the backdrop of indisputable outrages, atrocities, and shocking behaviors of the Church, went into rather extreme condemnations of all things having to do with the Church and even Christianity, itself. Although sympathetic to the essential point that the Church as an institution was corrupt, I was and remain wholly disinterested in making some sweeping condemnation of all things associated with the Church of that time. Indeed, charity and widespread good works were hallmarks of Christiantity as it was projected into Medieval Europe through Catholicism: orphanages, old age homes, hospitals, and centers of teaching and repositories of knowledge simply would not have existed had there not been monks, nuns, and faithful among the laity to see to these awful and wonderful things in that difficult time.

I stopped writing on About.com for reasons having to do with the overbearing behavior of the moderator of the Medieval History forum and the increasingly vehement, Right-wing rhetoric being spewed by moderators on political forums that kept being posted in the sidebar of the Medieval History forum.

But during my tenure as a commenter—a term that made "A Once and Future Language" the longest thread ever there—I provided not just instruction in the spoken and written language of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, but also entertainment of several sorts, something I did on message boards I frequented in the 1990s, too. One of my favorite diversions was writing silly plays that I would post as comments. Readers here might recall that I published a play of sorts on AMERICAblog in late 2004, and I republished it here as a Wraith Classics installment in March of last year.

Recent comments addressed to me here and at Big Brass Blog have inspired me to resurrect one of my plays from the Medieval History forum. In bringing this one back to life, I have done some recasting, but the essential ideas and form of the play remain intact. By way of explaining the background for what readers are about to encounter, I should note that my plays at the Medieval History forum had two central characters: the Selig Wraith and the Dog. Both were spirits who lived by the River Stix, on the side where those who had just died came to be taken to eternal damnation, which was across the river. The Wraith and the Dog spent much of their time just being friends, occasionally traveling to times in history where something interesting might be going on. For the most part, they avoided major historical figures and events, though; but occasionally their curiosity would get the better of them, and they'd get into a situation they didn't much care for.

I never finished the entire series of plays, although in later works I hinted broadly at where the story arc was headed, as readers might notice in the play below. I did not get to the end point before I left the Medieval History forum, but maybe someday I shall do so here. I would have to republish more of the original plays, though, so readers here could get used to the characters and their story. Perhaps I shall do that someday, but for now I should be content to offer an updated version of one play.

Without further blather, I now present the updated, substantially expanded version of a play first published at the Medieval History forum of About.com on August 16, 2003.

Selig Wraith Productions
in association with
Medieval Musings Entertainment
proudly presents
The Trials

[Fade in scene]

[Sky in twilight; pan down to bank of wide river; water calm like glass: gloomy, murky]
[Pan toward shoreline]
[Two figures: one, a man; the other, a smaller animal]
[Voices of two conversing]
[Slow zoom]

Wraith: It's quiet tonight... no traffic at all.

Dog: Kind of spooky. Of course, I suppose it's supposed to be spooky here.

Wraith: [chuckling] Well, yes. This is the river to the other side.

Dog: [shuddering slightly, looking across the river] Sometimes I wonder what it's like over there.

Wraith: I shall allow my curiosity to go unsatisfied on that matter.

Dog: It's funny: as wraiths, our lot is to appear to people shortly before their deaths, and then we escort them to the riverbank here for the boatman to take across; but we don't really know where we're sending them.

Wraith: Oh, I have a good idea.

Dog: And that's another thing: We see them before their deaths, then we pick them up on the road here to the river after they've died... but what happens to them between the time when they die and when we put them on their way to the other side?

Wraith: [staring out at the water] It's not good.

Dog: [looking up at the Wraith] Do I want to know?

Wraith: [grinning, looking down at the Dog] Whether or not you want to know, I guess I should tell you anyway.

Dog: [staring straight at the Wraith's face] I really need to stop asking you throw-away questions just to make conversation, shouldn't I?

Wraith: [laughing] Don't worry. To us, it's just a story.

Dog: [sitting down] Let me get comfortable, here; I have a bad feeling I won't have occasion to be comfortable again for quite a while after this story.

Wraith: [looking absently back out over the water] Long ago, I had the same question as you about what happened to people right after they died, but before I caught up with them on the path down here to the river. I knew something significant had occurred because the souls were always so... so vacant by the time I found them again. Against my better judgment, I decided that I would follow one of my victims from the moment he died until he got to the path down here to the river.

Dog: This was before we met, right?

Wraith: Yes. In fact, had you been with me at that time, I'm sure I would have dragged you along on that misadventure.

Dog: "Misadventure"?! Now, I know I'm going to be sorry I asked about this.

Wraith: I went where I wasn't supposed to, I can tell you that much. My victim's soul walked right into this darkness that immediately became bright light directly in front of him.

Dog: Ah! The legendary light people see right after they die.

Wraith: I presume so. It makes sense... but that bright light comes from the end of a corridor that opens into a big room.

Dog: A room? What kind of room?

Wraith: Well, I got into the room, and there were all of these chairs behind a finely varnished wooden rail. The front of the room wasn't a front at all; it was a bright, grey fog... I mean, really bright. It took me a minute for my eyes to adjust to all that light; but finally, I began to make out what looked like two men standing with their backs to me. They were facing that bright mist. And over to the side was a cage, and the dead guy's soul was standing in the cage.

Dog: You're describing a courtroom of some kind.

Wraith: [nodding] Yes, but not just any courtroom.

Dog: Good Heavens! You saw a judgment! Cool!

Wraith: Not cool.

Dog: [Sitting back down] Uh-oh. What happened? And who were the two men standing there?

Wraith: To put it in context for you, my friend, those two were the big dogs.

Dog: Okay, now I have to hear this story.

[Fade to black]
[Scene opens in courtroom]
[Two men standing, facing bright fog; soul cowering in cage off to side]
[Man standing on left takes step forward, clears his throat, speaks into the bright fog]

Satan: My Lord, it is my pleasure to represent the prosecution in the matter of the dispensation of the soul before us this day.

[Man on right takes step forward]

Jesus: My Lord, I represent the soul of the deceased, coming as he does before this Court to be granted entry to Heaven.

Satan: I must object to this proceeding, Lord: counsel for the Defendant is related by blood to You; this presents a clear and compelling conflict of interest; I, therefore, move for summary judgment in favor of the Prosecution.

[Brief, uncomfortable silence.]

[Voice—almost youthful, barely audible—returns from fog]

God: Are you representing to this Court that the Lord God cannot be trusted to be objective at all times and in all matters?

Satan: [Straightening, looking serious] I would certainly not represent any such thing, my Lord... I am merely noting the appearance of a conflict of interest. I am certain that the Lord our God will always render a decision that is perfectly and everlastingly just.

God: Then proceed.

Satan: Yes, my Lord. [pauses briefly and looks down as if to think for a moment... looks back up] Your Honor, the facts are typical: a mortal human who has led a sinful life without honest and genuine shame during said life, having feigned salvation but never having sought redemption at any level of credibility whatsoever at any time in any place. All representations he would make to the effect that this Court should have mercy upon him must be dismissed for lack of demonstrable evidence during his life that he truly, in his heart, believed in You. His claims to the contrary are craven lies to save his soul from eternal damnation. This man was cruel, vicious, and unrepetent; he was, in fact, proud of his meanness and put it on display in ways that caused death and suffering to many, many thousands.

Jesus: My Lord, I stipulate that this man was a sinner; I further stipulate that these sins on more than several occasions reached gravity beyond...

Satan: [interrupting] Then we can move for summary judgment in my favor.

Jesus: No! The stipulation of sin is nothing more than an admission of the obvious: this soul belonged to a mortal human.

Satan: [Looking at Jesus] You seek to dismiss a recognized cause for conviction as nothing more than the "nature of the beast," or some such nonsense?

Jesus: [Still looking straight ahead] Each person is born with sin—original sin, if nothing else. If sinfulness were sufficient for conviction, all peoples in all times would be delivered to you upon death. We would have no need for judgment.

God: Where are you going with this argument, Yeshua?

Jesus: Grace was given to man as the means by which, though he be sinful and lost, he might also be saved.

Satan: [Becoming more pointed] "Grace"? A sleight of hand to save the lost soul? Does this "Grace" also undo the damage that poor, lost soul did in life? Does this "Grace" also protect Heaven from the corruption of a soul such as this?

God: The Court is pleased that you are so concerned with the purity of My House, Lucifer; but you will maintain decorum before me.

Satan: [casting eyes down, putting hands together at fingertips] My apology, dear Lord. I cannot but respond, though, to the claim that, by fiat of "Grace" or some other special dispensation, the sinner is forgiven of all that he has done: this soul belonged to a monster.

Jesus: Through me, he is forgiven.

Satan: [fighting back gleeful smile] And how is that done, might I ask my honored opponent, here?—Could it be that the Son is withholding evidence from this Court?

Jesus: [looking right at Satan] How dare you? I...

Satan: [interrupting] Setting aside his nature as a liar, which I should note compelled him in life to be the most pious of speakers in the hallways and streets, at what point did this miserable, human scum ever—EVER!—really accept you as his personal lord and saviour? WHEN?!

Jesus: [leaning toward Satan] When did I EVER pose that such was the categorical price of absolution? WHEN?! Do not put words into my mouth!

Satan: [throwing his head back, clapping his hands together] Lo, Jesus! Your own disciples put words into your mouth. Why? Because you left them to find their own way. Every lunatic, heretic, liar, charlatan, and soothsayer flowed into the vacuum you gave the world as your parting gift. What's the matter: was it going to get too complicated trying to make everyone "go and sin no more"? Send your weaklings out, but be sure they know they're nothing but a bunch of sniveling cowards because they didn't stand up to the whole goddamned Roman Legion on your behalf.

Jesus: People are the victims of the time in which they live. What am I to do of your demons who debase my believers as if it is my will, when it most decidedly is NOT?

God: [voice becoming more mature, feminine] Do not stand before Me, Jesus, and claim moral ambiguity. They have ALWAYS known right from wrong! ALWAYS!

Jesus: And they have always known the pain of mortal flesh that, by its very nature, separates them from You.

Satan: I am touched by your pity for their sad, sad loneliness... so isolated are they that they must wallow in sin to feed their poor, miserable flesh.

Jesus: I was one of them. I thought I was alone on the cross. [looking into the fog, leaning forward] Do you hear me?—ALONE!

Satan: Do not wail your pathetic lamentation in my presence, Jesus. Would you like to feel my separation from God... WOULD you? Eternal... everlasting... unrelenting darkness? And all the while, the mortals bathe in the sunlight of life... and all the while, even to the very last second of that life, they can hold up their hands and say, "O Jesus! You are my personal lord and saviour! Forgive me my sins! I am yours, I am yours, I am YOURS! [dramatic pause] [in mocking voice] And now, Jesus, please open those gates to Heaven, that I might sing the praises of our worthy Lord God forever and ever and ever."

Jesus: That is why I died for them.

Satan: Are you that stupid, son, or do you actually believe you died for some reason other than that you were nothing but a mere human? People die... they suffer, and then they DIE. That's what became of you, O Great Savior who had the book of your life written by your sycophants whose own lives were so bereft of meaning they needed your bleeding wounds to show them the way forward.

God: ENOUGH! Be silent and hear My judgment.

[Long stillness.]

God: [voice again youthful, soft] In the matter of this soul, My holding is thus. The facts are as presented, this soul having been of a mortal body and having committed sins such as to have fallen from My Grace. The issue is whether this soul shall be admitted to Heaven or be damned to eternal Hell. My ruling is that this soul shall be condemned to everlasting punishment. My reasoning is that the living person whose soul is before Me failed in his life to merit the Grace of God. Thus has Yahweh spoken.

[Satan looks up, smiling; Jesus stares at the ground, visibly shaking]
[Fog dims, becomes impenetrably dark]

Satan: [looking over at convicted soul in cage; then looking back at Jesus] Such a good proceeding.

Jesus: [turning his back on Satan and the Convicted] Take your spoils and leave.

Satan: Oh, I shall; but first I must go down the hall for a few minutes. [almost obvious affectation] Just keep an eye on my prize until I return.

[Satan walks toward door at back, slows down by shadowy figure sitting in chair]

Satan: [passing Wraith in chair, leans over, whispering, grinning] I just love this part.

[Satan exits]
[Long, dead silence]
[Jesus standing motionless with back to the Convicted]

Convicted: [hands on bars of cage, quietly, tentatively] Jesus?

Jesus: [almost looking over his shoulder, then looking away] The trial is over.

Convicted: But you said you love me... and... you forgive me.

Jesus: [shaking, almost choking on tears] Of course I do.

Convicted: [crying, clenching bars] Then save me. Please!

Jesus: [clenching teeth to speak] The ruling has been made.

Convicted: But you're God! You make the rules!

Jesus: [looking straight up, fighting tears] I do not "make" the rules; I am the rules. You have just declared me your personal savior; you have just recognized me as the Lord your God... and yet, all of this you have done when Faith no longer matters. Such is the way of the dead, believing that Grace can exist in the absence of Faith.

Convicted: And so you would forsake me in the same hour that your father forsook you? I cannot believe that you would let that happen ever again... I just cannot bear that thought. [brief silence] It was just... I just did what I thought was right.

Jesus: [openly crying] So did I.

[Door at back opens; Satan re-enters]
[Walks past Jesus, heading for cage]

Satan: [patting Jesus on the shoulder] We simply must stop meeting in the Wilderness like this, my friend.

[Cage opens; the Convicted steps out]

Satan: [taking the Convicted by hand, leading soul toward impenetrably dark fog] Come now; it is time we begin your eternity of everlasting torment... [looking over shoulder, winking at Jesus] Say goodbye to Jesus... [mockingly] Your client says, 'Bye-bye', Jesus.

[Zoom camera to follow Satan and the Convicted into the fog]
[Fade to black]
[Return scene to Wraith and Dog at bank of river]

Wraith: As he disappeared into that fog, Satan laughed hysterically... and Jesus wept. I found the soul coming down the pathway to the river. Just like all the others we find here, he didn't have a single word to say. Just another miserable soul going to Hell. Funniest part is, the guy had been the king—or ruler or something—of a country in the 21st Century.

Dog: He was a king?!

Wraith: Well, I thought so. I had gone to visit him several days before his death because he was such a horrible and powerful man that I was afraid he might actually be a harbinger of the End Time.

Dog: Well, was he?

Wraith: Sort of. But I appeared to him instead of to the one who was at the nexus of the Tribulation... so I got the wrong fellow.

Dog: And Satan's plan went forward, then.

Wraith: Actually, no. Satan had no interest in bringing the world to an end in that time. That's why Satan was acting like this was just another hapless soul waiting to be dragged into Hell. He certainly didn't want God to think an agent of the Apocalypse was standing right there in front of Him.

Dog: Now I'm totally confused.

Wraith: So was I: I could have sworn Richard Cheney was the king of that country, and that's why he was the one I needed to visit. Turned out he wasn't the king, and he wasn't the one I should have visited at all.

Dog: It was a ruse?

Wraith: Completely. I thought the putative king was just a puppet, but it turned out he really was the powerful leader, and it was he, and he alone, who was dragging the world to the end of all things. And to this very day I can't believe I didn't see the Mark on George W. Bush.

Dog: That was the name of the one who bore the Mark?

Wraith: And I didn't have a clue... then again, neither did Satan.

Dog: [shaking head violently] Good grief! That's still giving me chills, too. You actually had Satan walk right by you... and he grinned at you?! YE GODS, Wraith!

Wraith: Yep. And I'm here to tell you that I am resolved never to get that close to Lucifer again... That's why you and I are staying on this side of the river.

Dog: And we're not going upstream to that century you were talking about, either, are we?

Wraith: [looking west] That place isn't there anymore anyway.

Dog: [ears going straight up] Holy cow, Wraith! Can we go somewhere and drink about a keg of ale to calm my nerves?

Wraith: [smiling broadly] How about some ale from London... early 14th Century?

Dog: [wagging tail] Perfect! That sounds like enough centuries between us and whatever you were talking about that I don't want to know about. And while we're on our way, can we have a bit of poetry to get us going?

Wraith: Absolutely.

[Wraith and Dog walking east along river bank]
[Pan camera up as Wraith begins poem]
[Fading voice, echo chamber effect]

Counts the hours, th' wayward soul;
    passion's sinner awaits th' toll.
Drink life's bounty, suffer an' die;
    Christ will abide! This be thy lie.
Alone thou wert, before thy birth;
    soon to be ash—such is thy worth.
Precious souls, know not their fates.
    Live, love, an' laugh: thy grave awaits!

[Fade to black]
[Credit roll]
[Cut]

©2003, Selig Wraith.

And the Dark Wraith takes a bow.

Liberation's Ruins

2007-02-04T20:31:00.000-05:00

This graphic may be reposted with attribute.

The Dark Wraith joins the world in celebrating the new American century.

Editorial: Resolve and Resolution

2007-02-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

At a request in a mass e-mailing from MoveOn.org, I herewith publish the link to a site where readers may learn how to contact Congress regarding a non-binding resolution opposing the Bush Administration's plan to deploy 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. I do this with the qualifier that follows.

I have in previous articles left no doubt about my positions on matters related to the American-Iraqi War. Even in my use of that term—the "American-Iraqi War"—I make clear that this is not, as the mainstream media has convinced the public, something less. Specifically, it is not some "civil war" we happen to be caught up in. The incidence of a civil conflict currently underway in Iraq is irrelevant to the fact that the United States is at war there: we are pouring tens of thousands of troops into Iraq, we are spending eight billion dollars a month on military operations, our soldiers are getting killed and wounded there, and we are killing and wounding thousands of enemy fighters and civilians, almost all of which are Iraqis. That's a war; and because the U.S. is fully engaged, it is an American war. It is not a "conflict"; it is not a "military action"; and, most of all, it is not a "civil war"—not to us. The United States of America is at war in Iraq. All else about the fight is mere detail.

Who is fighting whom matters to our situation only to the extent that someone is fighting us. Our military personnel are getting killed and wounded, our treasury is being depleted, and our ability to project effective force, both politically and militarily, in other theatres around the world is being systematically and catastrophically compromised. Sectarian, factional, and political strife on the ground are ancillary.

The Congress of the United States handed George W. Bush the power to wage this war. That was not the first time the federal Legislature had avoided an actual declaration of war but nevertheless allowed a commander-in-chief all the power he needed to do so. To the extent that few in the Congress of 2002 had the courage to deny Mr. Bush the authority he then used so expansively, the Members of that Congress—and no less the people who elected its Members and the President—bear responsibility for what has since happened and what is to come.

George W. Bush will not be stopped with a non-binding resolution. Likely, he would not be stopped with legislative action that was genuinely substantial. It is not in the nature of his Presidency to back down or to stand down. It is not in his nature to do so.

Unless this Congress takes the steps—the long, painful, perilous steps—to impeach and then remove him and Vice President Richard V. Cheney from office, the American-Iraqi War will continue. Not only will it continue, it will escalate: we will revisit the matter of troop surges again when this current, feeble increase has proven insufficient. The neo-conservatives are fully prepared to deal with the utter failure of their use of military violence by volunteering the nation for more of it.

Again, until President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard V. Cheney are impeached by the United States House of Representative and convicted and removed from office by the United States Senate, the American-Iraqi War will not only continue, but will expand. It will use more American lives; it will expend more American money we are borrowing by the hundreds of billions of dollars from nations that are our trade, military, and ideological adversaries; and it will finally—actually, quite soon—turn out to have been the pale predicate to a war between the United States and Iran. Once that happens, the Congress will find it impossible to stop a conflagration of historic proportions from rising as an impenetrable, unbreakable tower of military engagements that will define, and ultimately eviscerate, the United States for years to come.

Make no mistake: we are preparing for war with Iran, and once we (or the Israelis) have preemptively attacked, there will be no turning back. More importantly, the ensuing war between the United States and Iran will absorb the American-Iraqi War, and in their inseparability, we shall have no further opportunity to stop the one that started it all because Iraq will prove to have been nothing more than the staging ground for a full-blown, region-spanning, "Middle East War" of the 21st Century.

That war, by the way, will be nuclear, horrific, and long. Somewhat before those features become fully evident, it will be inevitable.

To George W. Bush, that non-binding resolution being prepared by Congress is a dare, and he will take it. He is, in the terminology of political psychology, a Social Dominance-Oriented/Right-Wing Authoritarian Leader (SDO-RWAL). In plain English, he's a schoolyard bully; but contrary to the false hope that schoolyard bullies back down when finally, resolutely confronted, they do not. Instead, they become more violent, and their expressions of violence arrive swiftly, without warning, and without reserve. All standing up to a real bully does is make him or her remove vestiges of comity; what is revealed is the true nature of his or her kind in all its unrelenting ferocity.

Pass that non-binding resolution on George W. Bush, and watch what happens. Unless Congress has the guts to take its dispute with Mr. Bush far past toothless expressions of feelings, hopes, and wishes, the President will take that resolution as his justification for an escalation of the confrontation far past anything for which this Congress has shown the intestinal fortitude.

Throwing 21,500 troops at the American-Iraqi War is dumping a couple cans of gasoline onto an already out-of-control fire. Bad as that idea is, passing a non-binding resolution critical of George W. Bush will ensure that Congress finds out what really happens when weaklings think they can stand up to bullies with nothing more than stern rhetoric. Bullies don't back down, not in real life, anyway. And they like it when their victims give them an excuse to get violent. Readers who don't believe this have never had to deal with an honest-to-goodness bully, batterer, or abuser. They are predictable, and underestimating their willingness to remain bullies, batterers, and abusers is a prescription for getting hurt very badly.

So, while I have provided at the beginning of this article the link to MoveOn.org, for my own part, I convey to Members of Congress this different message:

Unless you are ready, willing, and able to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard V. Cheney, then convict and remove them from office, stop trying to curry favor with the progressive community with your non-binding resolutions. Not only will you goad this Administration to act directly in opposition to your wishes, but you will make Mr. Bush and his people turn on you and on us. Given that the best you can muster is a worthless, non-binding resolution, and given that the best we as an electorate can muster is blustering showpeople like you, it is quite evident that we are in no way prepared for the consequences of challenging this Administration. Only when the Congress can do something far more substantial than mouthing toothless protestations will we be in a position to stop what will otherwise be the inevitable course of this country into a wider, more destructive conflict spanning the Middle East.

For the time being, far better it will be for the Democratic majority to pursue highly successfully public relations campaigns like its recent 100-hour flurry of legislation. That way, Mr. Bush will be able to wield his veto pen against the will of the People without having to get ugly.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

Special Blog Post: Molly and George

2007-01-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

When George W. Bush finally died, he found himself in a large, very nice hotel being led down a hallway of suites by none other than Molly Ivins.

"Hurry it along, there, Shrub. We've got to get you settled into the room and get your things unpacked. Dinner is always served at six o'clock sharp, and we don't want to be late."

Quite confused by the whole situation and somewhat out of breath from the brisk pace he was having to maintain to keep up, George panted, "Dinner?"

"Well, yes, George," Molly answered without looking back. "This is a respectable establishment."

"The after-life is in a five-star hotel?!" George demanded.

"Of course," Molly growled as she stopped at the door to one of the suites.

George caught up to her as she unlocked the door and opened it. He stuck his head in and looked around, "This place is gorgeous! I actually made it to Heaven even after all the things I did in my life that I knew were wrong and despicable and evil!"

Molly then patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, Shrub, it's like this: I'm in Heaven. You, on the other hand, are now my roommate for the rest of Eternity."

Upon hearing this, George walked slowly and quietly over to the large bay windows, and after looking out for a long, silent moment into the blackness of the Infinite Void, he grunted, "Well, shit."

♦ ♦ ♦

Godspeed, Ms. Ivins, and thank you.

Special Blog Post: Humor That Won't Be for Everyone

2007-01-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

The joke that follows is not funny...

...unless, that is, you have a very quirky sense of humor, in which case, not only will you find the joke worth a laugh, but you will also be delighted by the graphic I provide in links at the end of this post. In fact, you might find out that the greatest humor of the joke is in printing out the graphic and putting it up where others will see it and say, "Uh... I don't get it."

Without further ado, here's the joke.

Three missionaries, two of them Presbyterians of good breeding and education and one a Free Will Baptist from the sticks, were captured by cannibals. They were taken to a guarded tent and thrown in.

One of the Presbyterian preachers hollered, "What are you going to do with me?"

A cannibal guard stuck his head in and replied, "We're going to fatten you up one at a time, boil you, eat you, and use your skin to make a big canoe."

Within an hour, a huge meal was served to this minister, who was quite hungry and snarfed it all down, after which he was dragged out of the tent, never to be seen again.

The second minister bawled, "Guard! What are you going to do to me?!"

The cannibal poked his head in the tent, rolled his eyes, and said, "We're going to fatten you up, boil you, eat you, and use your skin to make a big canoe."

And just like with the first preacher, this one was promptly served a huge meal, which he devoured quickly because of his hunger, after which he was dragged out of the tent, never to be seen again.

The Free Will Baptist minister had stayed silent through all of this. The cannibal stuck his head in to see why the fellow wasn't demanding to know the details of his fate and saw that the guy was just sitting there. The cannibal shrugged his shoulders and handed him the big meal.

A little later, the cannibal stuck his head in the tent, and the first thing he saw was that the meal was untouched; then he realized that the Baptist was over in the corner stabbing himself all over his back and stomach with the fork that had been provided with the food.

The cannibal yelled, "What th' Hell are you DOING?!!" to which the heavily bleeding man replied:

"Ain't nobody gonna make a canoe outta ME!"

And now, if you found that joke worth a laugh, and if you understand the underlying metaphor, please feel free to use this graphic as wall art for your home or office, or as a statement to post on your own Website.

Click here for the large version, click here for the medium version, or click here for the small version.

The Dark Wraith thanks those in the audience who are smiling.

Special Analysis: The Battlefield and the Nomads

2007-01-25T11:12:00.000-05:00

While the mainstream media reports in almost incidental fashion that armed forces of the United States have made several lethal attacks on suspected terrorist enclaves in Somalia, some online writers in the Blogosphere have taken a more concerned view of these military forays. For example, the blogger Peter of Lone Tree, writing at BlondeSense, notes an article at World War 4 Report rather graphically describing the result of a U.S. aerial attack earlier this month in southern Somalia near the Kenyan border, a strike in which perhaps 80 people—nomads going to watering holes at night—were killed, along with livestock. It is worth noting that nomadic peoples are often night travelers, and not only because of cooler temperatures after dark: the night usually affords nomads some degree of safety because they are less noticeable. In fact, even in modern urban areas of the world, "nomadic" sub-cultures exist entirely unknown to most people, who are out only in daylight and early evening.

In response to Peter of Lone Tree's brief recap of the recent U.S. military activity in Somalia, I offered commentary at BlondeSense that I herewith post in edited and expanded form as a special analysis.

The military actions we are undertaking in Somalia are pursuant to the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT). While many, if not most, Americans understand that term largely as conceptual American policy, it is most decidedly far more specific and operational; and because it is persistently and tangibly applicable, it is altogether lethal, as well.

We truly are waging a "global war": we as a nation have declared that we stand ready to carry out military missions in any theatre, within any sovereign nation, and by any means; and not only are we prepared in a contingency sense to do so, we will do so.

That's how wars are fought. They are not about some visceral, emotional readiness; they are, instead, about planning, action, and follow-up. They are not about the rhetoric of war; they are about the actual destruction of property and the killing of people. To dismiss warhawks like Richard Cheney and George W. Bush as a blustering cowards who declined to fight the wars of their generation is to miss the point that, in our generation, they are the nexus of state-sponsored violence that can be projected anywhere in the world.

In the large sense, the U.S. troops in Iraq are not fighting "the" war. That lowly country is merely one venue—a high-profile, quite visible one—on a global battlefield. Leaving Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with disengaging "the" war the neo-conservatives have declared with the advice and consent of the Congress.

Our fierce and war-wise President and Vice President—steeped as they are in military tradition and combat experience, of course—have said that we are in a "generational struggle". In Mr. Cheney's words, "It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term." For all intents and purposes, that means our leaders have begun a war without terminus, without borders, and without any meaningful way to stop it if the strategy of opponents of the madness focus on one theatre of engagement without understanding the cancer of American hegemony that has infected the very essence of American foreign policy in ways unchangeable by the particular desires, resolutions, or passions of any given Congress.

Far more important than Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or any other particular skirmish, be it big, long, and expensive or small, short, and sweet, is this: because the United States of America really is part of the global community, a Global War on Terror necessarily means a war that can and without any doubt will be prosecuted here every bit as vigorously and violently as it is in the darkest reaches of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. That's what the "Global" in GWOT really means.

The United States as Empire remains on the move. It is not stopped by what might become a quagmire in one theatre of engagement, it is not abated by what might become a public hostility to its architects, and it is not deterred by what might become escalating reactive violence by those of the world greatly harmed by its ways and means.

The gathering night of Empire will proceed apace, and it will be on that darkened road into the future that the peoples of the world, including the citizens of this country, will find themselves traveling, nothing more than another horde of nomads hoping not to be noticed by the Empire's engines of death prowling the blackened skies.

The Dark Wraith welcomes America to the battlefield.

Analysis: Index Portfolio Performance during the Bush Administration's First Six Years

2007-01-21T22:48:00.000-05:00

George W. Bush became the 43rd President of the United States on January 20, 2001. Until January 4, 2007, when the Democrats took control of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, the Republicans had controlled both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, save for a brief period in mid- to late-2001 when a Republican-turned-Independent caused an even split in the Senate. Over the past six years, then, the financial house of this country has been in the virtually uninterrupted hands of the GOP, during which time the federal government went from running growing budget surpluses in the last years of the Clinton Administration to bleeding hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink every year under President George W. Bush and his congressional allies. A list of other calamities of Republican rule would necessarily include, but not be restricted to, an uncontrolled and debilitating regime of trade deficits; a spiraling conflict in the Middle East; and, of course, the first successful attack by a foreign enemy on cities in the continental United States in almost 200 years.

The Republican Party, through its legislators in Congress and its President in the White House, has also overseen what must be described as nothing short of abysmal performance of the U.S. stock markets, which represent the overwhelming bulk of the value of all public ownership of American corporations. It is in the stocks traded on these exchanges that much of the wealth of the nation is invested by everything from huge pension and mutual funds to individual speculators.

Blame for the miserable performance of the stock markets over the past six years rests squarely with the GOP, which rode into office on a long-standing platform of fiscal prudence and policies tilted toward economic growth through low taxes and reduction of regulatory hurdles to business investment and growth. The Republican Party has failed, despite its blustering rhetoric and the curiously rosy data pumped out from the government agencies it controls.

As of Friday, January 19, 2007, George W. Bush had been President of the United States 2,188 days, two days short of exactly six years. Economic policy during those six years has been completely controlled by President Bush and his Republican Party members in Congress. Democrats had no control over the formulation of economic policies and the federal budgets arising therefrom. They were shut out of taxation and spending decisions by uncompromising rules and actions imposed by the Republicans, who showed no intention of or interest in consensus in governance. Responsibility for the huge federal budget deficits year after year that have hallmarked the rule of the Republicans rests squarely with their party, its legislators in Congress, and the policy-makers in the White House, including George W. Bush, himself.

The public sector has suffered the long-held hope of certain branches of conservativism that the federal government could be reduced in size, crippled in carrying out certain of its regulatory duties, and diminished in its tax revenue generating capacity. The desired goal of this political prescription of "limited government" is that, through the diminishment and degradation of the public sector, the private sector would flourish. No reasonable argument could be made that, if the private sector were indeed the great beneficiary of entrepreneurialism at its most productive, ownership in business would reflect this through substantial returns on equity. Investors in the stock markets of the United States, particularly investors abiding by prudent portfolio diversification rules and reasonable buy-and-hold strategies, should have seen appreciation in the real value of the money they invested in stocks. This is the necessary reward to induce surrender of current consumption. It is the motivation for all rational investors, be they individuals of limited means or great mutual funds: the goal of investing in the stock market is to have at a future time more purchasing power by foregoing current consumption opportunities. For many Americans, long-term investments in stocks and other securities are to the end of having some degree of financial security in retirement. For businesses, the accumulation of equity positions in other companies is in its ideal a signal of calculated judgment that gain is to be had through the long-term, expected future cash flows of acquired enterprises.

From the first day of trading, January 22, 2001, after President Bush became the 43rd President of the United States, until the last trading day, January 19, 2007, before the publication date of this article, the performance of the major stock markets—measured by the index portfolios of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite—has been abominable. Only the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to achieve a positive real return on investment over the past six years, and that return was a miserly half-a-percent on an annualized basis, a level of performance that would get any fund manager taken out and shot.

January 22, 2001, was the first day of trading after Mr. Bush became President. The three major stock market indices stood at the following levels at the close of trading on that day:

January 22, 2001, Index Closing Values
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,578.24
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1342.9
     NASDAQ Composite: 2757.91

At the close of trading on Friday, January 19, 2007, these same three averages stood at the following levels:

January 19, 2007, Index Closing Values
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 12,565.53
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1,430.50
     NASDAQ Composite: 2,451.31

If an investor were to have formed a portfolio based upon each of these three indices and managed each portfolio in terms of composition and balance to mirror the relevant index, the investor would have earned the following total nominal returns on investment over the 2,188 days from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007:

Total Nominal Portfolio Returns over 2,188 Days
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +18.79%
     Standard & Poor's 500: +6.52%
     NASDAQ Composite: —11.12%

Expressing these returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the nominal results just presented are as following:

Annualized Nominal Portfolio Returns over 2,188 Days
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +2.91% per year
     Standard & Poor's 500: +1.06% per year
     NASDAQ Composite: —1.95% per year

The above are nominal (that is, "not corrected for inflation") results. Taking into account the erosion of purchasing power (that is, "the effect of inflation") on portfolio values over the holding period requires adjusting each of the current values to its equivalent purchasing power value on January 22, 2001. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index data for January 2001, the CPI stood at 175.1, and for December 2007, the CPI stood at 201.8. The January 2007 figure can be estimated by various methods, and here, a conservative projection of 201.83 is derived from the three-month moving average of the CPI, implying an annualized inflation rate for the current month of nearly zero, based upon the average of the annualized inflation rates for the previous three months.

Expressing the closing index portfolio values as of Friday, January 19, 2007, in terms of their January 2001 purchasing power equivalents provides the following results:

January 19, 2007, Index Values in January 2001 Purchasing Power Value
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,901.18
     Standard & Poor's 500: 1241.03
     NASDAQ Composite: 2126.63

The total real return on investment for each portfolio is then the quotient of the January 2001 index value when divided into the adjusted January 19, 2007, value:

Total Real Portfolio Returns from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +3.05%
     Standard & Poor's 500: —7.59%
     NASDAQ Composite: —22.89%

Finally, expressing these real returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the total real return results just presented are as follows:

Annualized Real Portfolio Returns from January 22, 2001, to January 19, 2007
     Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.50% per year
     Standard & Poor's 500: —1.31% per year
     NASDAQ Composite: —4.24% per year

The results above are summarized in the following chart:

The total and real returns to the selected portfolios are presented below in graphical form:

An investor forming a portfolio tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the beginning of the Bush Administration in January of 2001 until January 19, 2007, would have realized a total gain in real value of the portfolio of just over three percent, which is equivalent to an annualized, compounded rate in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of just one-half percent per year; the investor forming a portfolio tracking the Standard & Poor's 500 over that period would have suffered a total loss in real value of the portfolio of more than seven-and-a-half percent, which is equivalent to an annualized, compounded annual rate of loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of about one-and-a-third percent per year; and the investor forming a portfolio tracking the NASDAQ Composite index over that period would have suffered a loss in total real value of the portfolio of almost twenty-three percent, which is equivalent to a compounding rate of loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of about four-and-a-quarter percent per year.

From a well-balanced portfolio of the common stock of reasonably low-risk, very large public corporations to an equally well-balance portfolio of the common stock of relatively riskier, small-cap public corporations, common stock—the equity (that is, the "ownership") claim on corporations—has provided real returns over the course of the Bush Administration that were at best miserably anemic and more likely significantly negative.

Securities markets do not make long-term assessments of the value of the American economy based upon political biases: billions of shares of stock trade each day, and the total value of these trades is so great as to be almost incomprehensible. Over the past six years, the absolute control of the government by the Bush Administration and its Republican allies in Congress has been subject to an on-going, objective assessment by the securities markets of the United States. The result to date of this real-value assessment is that the American economy, as represented by the market values of stocks of large, medium, and small public corporations, has not grown. This is an undeniable, unavoidable fact delivered by the very stock markets whose large-scale participants by and large support the Republican Party, its goals, and its politicians.

Regardless of how large the nearly daily dose of good economic news the Bush Administration induces the mainstream media to repeat, the Administration can neither manipulate the stock market data, nor can it find a scapegoat for the broad-based, long-term depletion of private equity value its policies have caused.

The performance of stock markets has real consequences for average, working Americans. The money they invest is money they surrender using in the here and now, hoping, as they do—indeed, trusting—that their foregone current consumption will be rewarded with greater purchasing power later, very likely in their retirement years when they are no longer generating significant income through work. When the stock markets fail to provide that reward, and especially when they fail so strikingly over a six-year period, those average investors have effectively seen their decision to invest rather than consume prove to have been wrong and harmful to their self-interest. For the average Americans who plan for retirement in part or in whole based upon investments made and held in the stock market over many years, the Bush Administration's record is nothing short of catastrophic in terms of people's financial security. For most, however, the full realization of the value lost and the disrupted, nearly irreparable damage to future capital appreciation of their investments in the stock markets will come only after the era of the neo-conservatives has come fully to an end, and it will then be the grim responsibility of future politicians to do what little can be done to rectify the mess the GOP left in the wake of its shameful leadership at the beginning of this century.

The Dark Wraith will provide frequent and pointed reminders during the time to come of why the financial house of this nation is the wreck that it surely will be.

The Written Peace: Open Forum of January 19, 2007

2007-01-19T22:55:00.000-05:00

As your host prepares to do something he's never done before on this Website, an open thread is herewith offered to give readers a place to say what's on their minds and to speak their peace.

I shan't tell you what it is I'm trying to do, and the reason is that I'm not altogether sure I can accomplish it; not, that is, without moving Heaven and Earth. The Heaven part would be easy, what with how light and airy that place is supposed to be. It's the Earth part that poses the challenge, what with the lithosphere and all those metals and clays and people weighing it down.

Nevertheless, stepping back from the Herculean aspects of what I'm planning, I think I can get the project done and posted, maybe this weekend if I'm lucky. It's actually part of a larger project I've undertaken, one that has to do with my other life, the one where I'm a professor.

Although I long for the old days when I could teach with a blackboard and a piece of chalk, that time has passed, and now college teaching is fast becoming a battle to stay in front of new technology and try to keep it from overrunning the core of my craft. The obsession with this new technology and that new technology is driving me to distraction: companies marketing their latest wares are bad enough, but they find such a receptive audience in higher education, especially among the "IT" (information technology) insiders who swear to God in front of the administrative purse-holders that we simply must have the latest, or that we simply cannot do without the coolest. And, of course, I come off looking like some latter-day Luddite when I growl that I don't need it, I don't want it, and I won't use it if it's purchased.

The argument doesn't last long. The marketing types join forces with the IT folks, and together they pull out the Death Pulse: "It will make your job as a teacher easier." That's when enough of the faculty—deprived of memories of previous promises like that or too young to know that new technology doesn't really work that way—all run like a herd to the watering trough of the newest toys, gadgetry, and even methods that "incorporate technology into the classroom."

This all never would have happened if Bill Gates and his Microsoft crew had been forced to sit through a four-year college education with PowerPoint Professors. They would all now be dead from the boredom in their college classes, or they would have become middle-class workers in the financial services sector. (But I repeat myself, there.)

Grr.

So, here I am, trying to work out for my own purposes the details of how to deploy some Information Age technology, and I'm hoping to use this Website as my demonstration prototype. Rest assured that, even if I pull this off, it's not going to be perfect; but at the same time, I won't deploy it here if it's less than adequate.

Speaking of teaching, several weeks ago I had an interesting new experience. At one of the schools where I teach, we have a day several times a year when we bring in kids in grades five and six to do math and science stuff. These math mini-camps always comprise six stations, each in its own classroom on campus, where a professor and assistants spend thirty minutes with each group having the kids do something math-related. The kids come from various schools in the area, and each school group moves from station to station through the day. At the end, we have a big group assembly where we show them something very cool that has to do with physics and mathematics applied to a real-world, fairly dramatic situation. (Think "conservation of momentum.")

At my station, the kids learn about measuring, calculating costs, and determining profit. They make Kool-Aid, and they must "pay" for the sugar, water, and drink mix they use, and they must then have judges determine how much they can charge for their drink based upon how good the final product is. Each school group that comes in is broken into four teams, each of which works against the clock to get the product made and judged. Generally speaking—partly because I play the role of a bellowing, high-strung professor who lets them go hog-wild as they do their work—the kids really love the project, especially the part where I have to try their drinks. There have been times when I took a swig and nearly choked to death, either because the drink was so sweet it could rot teeth, or because it was so sour it sucked all the mucous out of my face.

We've been doing these math mini-camps for more than a few years, now, and they always go off without a hitch. From these brief encounters with ten- and eleven-year-olds, along with the occasional tutoring I do of kids this age and the fact that I used to teach at a private K-12 school, I have learned a little bit about how children work, think, and (to some extent) learn.

This math mini-camp I just did was a little different from usual. This was the first time we had as one of the "school" groups a community of home-schoolers and Montessori school attendees. Apparently, the parents of these kids constitute a very close-knit, identifiable, real community of child-rearers out in this part of the country. I had no idea.

As I understand it, there was some kind of request made to the administration, possibly including some degree of political pressure, for the college to recognize this learning community and to acknowledge it as meriting a slot in the math mini-camp just like we would give to a traditional school. I don't know exactly how that worked, nor do I want to.

The day started off a little different. We always show the kids a movie and have them eat before the mini-camp begins. This time, our plan to show one of the Harry Potter movies was shot down: the home-schooler/Montessori parents nixed that one. Ditto for Pirates of the Caribbean. Fortunately, we have some old, G-rated, non-controversial stuff in the library, so we got through that issue without much of a hitch.

It then occurred to a couple of the station leaders that content would have to be modified: references to evolution at the genetics station were pulled, as was a discussion of the time frames for ice ages at the weather analysis station.

I didn't have to worry about any of that at my station, so I figured there would be no differences between the traditional school groups and the home-schooler/Montessori group. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Unlike the kids from traditional schools—who come into my classroom yakking excitedly, flying everywhere with their teachers and my assistants trying their best to get them seated into equal-sized groups at the four tables I've set up—the home-schooler/Montessori kids came in quietly, their mothers following. There were five of these mothers, three with infants and toddlers in arms. The women were dressed in a way I cannot describe as exactly "conservative" so much as almost (for lack of a better word) "poor"—or, maybe more accurately, "joyless": no bright colors, nothing pretty, no effort to dress up at all for the day. It was almost like costume—no, it was costume; it was a statement, both about beliefs and about class status—and it was so striking, even in its subtlety. Only one of these mothers would even look at me, so I had to have the assistants explain to them how the station goes in terms of process and objectives: the kids at each table constitute a team that has to work quickly and cooperatively to make a pitcher of Kool-Aid using ingredients in a cost-efficient way to produce a final product to be judged for how much people might pay for it.

The kids obediently sat down at their tables. I began my usual hollering, thundering, act-crazy routine, which always elicits laughing, talking, and general mayhem. From these kids, though, I got only reserved chuckles.

"Fine," I thought to myself, "I'll go for the grand finale before they get to work on their project." My station is conducted in one of our big biology labs. In one corner is a full-sized mannequin with the skin off in the front to show the internal organs. The back is just a normal mannequin, complete with a naked ass. I always say, "We're about to begin, and I want you to have FUN," as I walk over to the mannequin, which I then grab and whirl around as I say, "BUT!!!" and pointing to the dummy's backside, I look at the kids and growl, "...and this is a BIIIIIG BUTT... don't make a mess!"

Usually, the kids roar with laughter; but not these home schoolers and Montessoris. Quite a few of them almost did, trying their best not to look at their mothers, who were glaring alternately at them and at me. The kids held their laughter in check.

Oh, well. So much for that. I bellowed, "GO! Get your drinks made!"

Now, at this point the room usually turns into a fine example of chaos, with kids running up to me to fill their pitchers with water, everyone arguing and yelling about who's going to do what, how much sugar should be put in, how much drink mix should be added, what goes in first, who's going to keep track of how much cost is being accumulated, and all that. But these home schoolers and Montessoris weren't like that, not at all. For several minutes, there was almost no movement at any of the four tables. Eventually, at three of the tables I saw what were probably latent, social dominance-oriented personality types emerge to try to coordinate action. The fourth table seemed to have no such individual, so there was an absence of anyone who could take a leadership role. I sent two assistants to that table to help the kids get going.

At every one of the four tables, each of which had five kids, there were at least two who simply refused to participate in the activity. They just sat there, not so much defiantly as—how should I put it?—maybe petulantly: they just weren't going to be involved in this. Some of them looked like they were on the verge of tears, and my efforts, along with those of the assistants, to try to pull them into the group activity failed miserably, in part because the groups, themselves, were not "naturally" organizing, which would have been necessary for any meaningful effort of members to help someone feel welcome and needed.

The thirty minutes seemed to drag by, unlike how it always is with the classes of traditional school kids, wherein I'm in a heart-stopping race to get everything accomplished in the lousy half-hour I've got. But here's the thing: these home schooler/Montessori kids actually got finished sooner than other kids do.

Much more importantly, the math calculations with which the traditionally schooled kids struggle were done by these home schooled and Montessori kids without batting an eye. Now, I'm talking literally about most traditionally schooled ten- and eleven-year-olds having serious problems doing ten cents plus one cent plus thirty-nine cents! Only a few of the traditionally schooled kids have any sophistication whatsoever in either organizing quantitative information or knowing what to do with it. It's not that they cannot add and subtract; most of them can, at least to a limited extent. Instead, it's that they don't see arithmetic having any connection to the information in front of them.

Not these home-schooled and Montessori kids, though. They had their math skills down pat. Most of the kids had done the math on their own. In fact, any part of the entire project they could do on their own, they did, and that's because they had no investment in their group, even though their final product had to be a group effort.

As many obvious and subtle differences between these kids and those who are schooled traditionally as I thought I had seen up to that point, more were about to go on display. Traditionally schooled kids almost invariably make drinks that come in at a per-cup cost of anywhere between twenty-two cents and a little under a dollar. However, every one of the four tables of home schooled and Montessori kids came in at under twelve cents per cup! In fact, they all came in at almost identical per-cup costs of eleven cents, with one group hitting ten cents. This consistency from one table to the next was striking, and the difference between how these kids used resources and how traditionally schooled kids used resources was remarkable.

But here's the upshot. The judges rate the drinks on a scale of one to four: a one means the drink will sell for five cents per cup; a two means the drink will sell for fifteen cents per cup; a three means the drink will sell for a quarter a cup; and a four means the drink will sell for fifty cents per cup. Usually, the ratings on the drinks are threes. We give a two if a drink doesn't taste very good, and we give a one if we really, really don't want to take another sip to make sure it's as bad as it tasted on the first try. Every one of the home schooler/Montessori groups got a one; and not only that, I'll tell you right now, that was being generous. I mean, I have no idea what they did, but somehow those drinks were uniformly the most awful stuff I had ever tasted in all the times I have run that station at math mini-camp.

The judges got together at the front of the room and bitched in whispers about how bad the stuff was that they'd just put in their mouths. I knew very well I wasn't going to be able to tell those kids—especially with their mothers right there—that their drinks sucked; so, without losing a beat, I stepped forward and hollered, "You all got the same rating! Let's have a big round of applause for yourselves! Congratulations!" I was thinking to myself, "Please, Lord, don't let anyone ask what the score was. Fortunately, just then, the next group arrived at the door, and one of my assistants bellowed, "Alright, it's time to head on over to the next station!"

Talk about being saved by the bell.

The rest of the day went as usual: total bedlam, yelling; laughing; drinks spilled; kids running up to tell me this, that and the other stuff about themselves—just delightful insanity, and a good dose of what learning can be like once in a great while.

One thing is still bothering me. Whenever the groups assemble to leave and go to their next station, I always have the chance to get hugged by some of the kids, and a few of the boys give me a glance that means I need to go up to them, take the smile off my face and replace it with a slightly serious look, and reach out with one of my big paws for a firm handshake with their small paws. "See you in about eight years," I like to say. Fifth and six graders aren't quite old enough to pretend approval of adults doesn't mean anything to them. I didn't have the chance to give any good-byes—hugs, handshakes, or even simple, big smiles—to those home-schooled and Montessori kids; but even though I feel bad about that, I honestly don't think it would have mattered to them if I had taken the opportunity to give some praise, pats on the back, and invitations to come again when they're ready for college. As long as those kids are under the watchful eye of their parents twenty-four hours a day, they have all the approval of adults they'll ever need... at least until they grow up.

If they're ever allowed to, that is.

This is an open forum. Talk about anything. I have special events planned for the evening, including a Kool-Aid tasting game if anyone's interested. Later, we'll turn up the house lights and have a contest to see who can act the most like a Democratic congressperson saying the word "impeachment" without breaking into a cold sweat.

If the crowd gets rowdy, we might have a round of "fantasy combat." That's where you have to describe exactly where you'd like to see George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get dropped into a combat zone in Iraq. Will it be a patrol in al-Anbar province? an IED bomb squad in downtown Baghdad? a poorly armored Humvee that's gotten off the main road near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit? You decide! Where would our President and Vice President best serve their country by bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East?

And, no, you don't get to choose strapping them to the nuclear bombs Israel is going to drop on Iran. The nukes these days are too small to carry extra payload. Chickenhawks mess up the aerodynamics of bombs they're tied to just as much as they mess up the future of the nations they latch themselves onto.

The Dark Wraith opens the espresso bar for the night's activities.

Special Graphic Post: Awaiting the Day

2007-01-15T11:48:00.000-05:00

This graphic may be reposted with attribute.

Special Blog Post: The Moment of a Comet

2007-01-13T12:28:00.000-05:00

At left is a morning picture of C/2006 P1, "Comet McNaught," so named for Robert McNaught, who found it as a faint smudge on a photograph taken in early August 2006 at the Siding Spring Observatory. The comet, a small celestial body making a brief visit to the inner solar system, is traveling on a trajectory that is making it one of the brightest of its kind in decades.

On January 12, Comet McNaught reached perihelion at only 16 million miles from the sun, which slung it around to emerge for people on Earth as an evening flare quietly shining in the low southern skies. It has a round, fuzzy head of volatile gas and dust, and a short, slightly delta-shaped tail of dust particles falling away. In the coming nights, it will be visible later into dusk, but it will be getting fainter as it slips away from the sun and Earth. Soon, it will be too dim to see with the naked eye.

Because it came in on such a tight trajectory, the sun's gravity has probably given the comet so much additional speed that it now has "escape velocity" from the solar system. That means it will never return. It will cruise out into the cold, stark emptiness of interstellar space, where it will forever slip through the bright darkness of faint galactic gravity fields and soft star winds, nothing but a tiny speck of ice and dust never again to be seen by human eyes, almost certainly never again to be sensed by any sentient being like us.

But we saw it; and in that almost meaningless moment when it was warmed by the sun, it was simply beautiful. If that matters when you think about comets, then let it matter when you think about yourself.

Editorial: The Age of War

2007-01-11T00:28:00.000-05:00

Wednesday evening, January 7, 2007, the President of the United States went before the American people to lay out his plan, what the Administration calls the "New Way Forward," to turn what is becoming a catastrophic U.S. involvement in Iraq into something other than the ominous and evident defeat looming ahead. Five brigades comprising 20,000 additional troops will be inserted into Baghdad, tours of duty for soldiers already there will be extended, and $1.2 billion dollars in new U.S. aid will be used for infrastructure and jobs programs in the war-ravaged country. The President is requesting another $5.6 billion in funds to pay for the troop surge, itself.

The Democrats who control Congress, joined by an increasingly vociferous group of Republicans, are on record opposing this escalation of the American-Iraqi War. According to CNN.com, the extent of formal plans on Capitol Hill to block the President's initiative are thus:

"[S]enators are working on a nonbinding resolution opposing more troops... The House plans to raise a similar resolution."

Such is the materially meaningful scope of countervailing force currently confronting President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative war-makers.

In a January 4, 2007, Special Analysis published here, I wrote the following:

Mr. Bush is going to get his wish: we'll stay; and for now, not only will we stay, but he will escalate this American-Iraqi War.

And the Democrats will not cut off funding for the war...

[W]e'll stay in Iraq... until we're bloodied beyond recognition of our hubris, beyond recognition of our preeminence, beyond recognition of our once unquestioned status as the leader of the free world; and then we shall leave. We shall leave, not when we want to, not when we need to, not when we've had enough, but instead when we are no longer relevant to the history of the future of Iraq and perhaps no longer greatly relevant even to the history of the future of places far from that awful land.

The will to end a bad war is insufficient: war, once born, has a life of its own. Both those who embrace it and those who oppose it stand in the shadow of its thrall. Mr. Bush bids that we walk deeper into its consuming flames, and so we shall. What strength we have to turn away is insufficient compared to the weakness already within our leaders to fight the vortex pulling us deeper into the maw of that which will be our undoing.

Should the Democrats be unable in the months ahead to find the wherewithal to stop this madness, waste not every ounce of energy in rage at their impotence, but instead reserve a modicum for pity of their ignorance: when first they had their chance to draw a sword against the god of war, perhaps they truly believed that a "non-binding resolution" was a weapon.

The Dark Wraith welcomes America to a war without end that cannot be stopped by a leadership without courage.

Special Analysis: Neo-Con End Run

2007-01-08T10:31:00.000-05:00

The Sunday Times is reporting that Israel is in the planning stages of a military airstrike on Iran's nuclear production facilities. The newspaper cites multiple, although unnamed, sources for its story, even though Israel is denying that any such operation is being planned. The Times claims the attack will involve warplanes that will first use conventional bombs to blow deep craters above the hardened, underground facilities, followed by low-yield nuclear bombs to carry out the actual destruction of the huge industrial bunkers. CNN.com reports that Israel has not received prior approval by the United States for such a strike on the three targets under consideration.

Despite the absence of explicit approval by the White House, such an attack would work to the advantage of the Bush Administration, facing as it now does a hostile Congress with a Democratic majority already talking publicly about ways to wind down American involvement in Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday intimated that Congress might even go so far as to deny funding for the President's soon-to-be-announced surge of as many as 20,000 more American troops into Iraq, a warning the Right-wing Weekly Standard claims "...makes the House Democrats the party of defeat, the party of surrender." If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, however, congressional Democrats would face the prospect of de-funding American military operations in Iraq at the same time a spiraling conflict would get underway right next door in Iran.

Few doubt that Iran would retaliate, and one of its most likely first actions would be to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world's oil is shipped from the Persian Gulf to the open seas. Iran has mined the waterway before. Furthermore, as described here and elsewhere, Iran has missile batteries lining its coasts, weapons that would make lumbering oil tankers the oil-bearing equivalents of enormous sitting ducks. While Israel's single-strike plan to end Iran's nuclear ambitions might be successful—a single strike was all it needed to destroy Iraq's Osirak nuclear complex in 1980—the rest of the world would be left to deal with a humiliated, enraged Persian state lashing out in some cases indiscriminately, but in other cases quite pointedly at Israel's putative backer, the United States.

A single Iranian Sunburn missile fired at a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf would drag the United States into war with Iran. Keeping U.S. troops stationed in neighboring Iraq from involvement would be next to impossible, especially if Tehran saw opportunity in goading weakened, under-staffed ground forces in provinces close to the Iraqi border with Iran.

With such a spiraling conflagration exploding in the Middle East, the Democrats in Congress might find little support for using the congressional power of the purse to turn U.S. policy in the Middle East away from military solutions. In fact, if anything, even a limited fight the U.S. might have with Iran would require both large infusions of additional troops into the theatre as well as many billions of dollars in new money to pay for those troops, their weaponry and support materiel.

Far from ending the American-Iraqi War, the Democrats just might find themselves having to go along with massive increases in funding for a regional war of which the Iraqi theatre was only the first and perhaps the least bloody phase.

The Dark Wraith invites readers to contemplate the situation into which Congress—indeed, the United States, itself—might very well be led shortly.

Special Blog Post: Doughnuts and Banking

2007-01-06T16:08:00.000-05:00

Eight years ago, in the final days of his work as a consultant, Aaron was desperately hoping for one more payment from a client, one that hadn't paid in months and one with which Aaron's consulting relationship was falling apart anyway. Desperate for money—any money—to stave off eviction and hunger, Aaron prevailed upon a gentleman who had previously been associated with the client corporation, and that decent, upright, Christian fellow finally agreed to wire some. Aaron called his bank every couple of hours for several days thereafter, and he finally got confirmation that funds had been received. That man who had no good reason to take care of a little bit of some client's bill had come through. Aaron's humiliation at having had to beg like some street person was set aside as he quickly wrote checks to pay bills.

As it turned out, the wired funds had, indeed, come through, but they wouldn't be available for several business days. The checks Aaron wrote bounced. Non-sufficient funds charges mounted, returned check fees piled up, and Aaron faced the possibility of criminal charges. What had been enough to get him right with just about everyone turned into a deficit of about six hundred bucks.

That was the end of all relationships Aaron would have with financial institutions.

It wouldn't be long before he would return, as he had too many times, to the streets. Old cars that were dangerous to drive when they could actually move, occasional use of the hidden key at a friend's apartment to grab some food and a shower, even less frequent groveling for a couple of bucks from brothers when they'd gotten over being mad about the last time he'd bummed five dollars. Mostly, Aaron kept going by using good-hearted people who didn't have the common sense or the willpower to tell him to go away forever. It was the whole nine yards of crash and burn: an irresponsible life of being a leech on society and on the people who thought they were helping.

Before the time of the Keynesian economists, those of the old Austrian school held sway, what we now call the "Classical" economists. One of their many tenets was that all unemployment (and underemployment) is voluntary. Aside from exceedingly rare, wholly incapacitated individuals, all people can find work. It might not be what they like, it might not be what they want, it might not pay what they think they're worth, it might disrupt their lives, their families, and their greater hopes; but some kind of work is always, always available. No one can plead destitution with a straight face of no personal responsibility whatsoever for his or her wretched lot. Aaron knew his economics, and he knew very well, despite his progressivist leanings, that the Classical economists were dead-on right about people like him.

Things got better for Aaron once he was given the keys to the run-down, inner-city, small, two-year school where he'd been teaching. The $7.50 per classroom hour was nothing compared to those keys, which meant that a couch in the Winter and a hot shower in the basement every morning was available. Lots and lots of challenging work was there, too, teaching across the curriculum, running the education side of the school, having to deal with every manner of educational, social, and mental health deficiency imaginable in a student body—what more could a person ask for?

The Classical economists were right, at least when it came to one White man whose life of sublimated excuses for being a loser finally yielded to patience, persistence, and a willingness to do what others wouldn't for a little paycheck.

Eventually, because of fool-hardy response to a personal, family matter, Aaron would leave that school and city; and from there, he would eventually return to near-destitution. Being coldly objective about it all, he probably wanted it that way: even though he was leaving a more-or-less physical home, he was returning to a much older home of his, the one he had first gotten used to in his adolescence and to which he had returned, over and over again, in his adult life.

A man can't fall to his death from a valley. The high places are for people too foolish to know what could happen up there.

Getting teaching work wherever he could, Aaron was making a meager go of it, though, where he had landed. The teaching gigs—finally supplemented as they were with a little janitorial-type work—were promising to put enough money in his pockets to stave off even the scent of desperation.

But then, last week, Aaron made a stupid mistake.

Many employers these days simply will not pay by physical checks. Aaron had been using a friend's account in another state as the depository institution for his payroll checks, but he'd been getting worried about this, not because of the friend's integrity, but because those checks were crossing interstate lines, and the cumulative effect of those regular transfers had the potential to cause his friend trouble with an increasingly aware, aggressive, and paranoid federal government. It was a miracle the IRS hadn't already made a move, and the prospect of those transfers triggering Homeland Security's thugs was beginning to worry him terribly.

Aaron decided it was time to make his peace with financial institutions by getting himself a checking account into which his paychecks could be direct-deposited. His long-held fears about the banking system convinced him that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to go near a regular bank, much less wander into one and beg for the favor of an account, but one credit union looked promising. His status as a teacher meant he would qualify without a hitch, or so he thought as he wallowed in his fantasy of becoming a big-people-type-person once again, after all these years. He put some gas in his car, drove to main location, tied his hair back, and headed in the doors.

The credit union building was really nice on the inside. It even smelled like an old-fashioned bank. The floor was carpeted, and right there in the lobby were several big, open boxes of doughnuts. Aaron thought to himself, "Those are for people who can't live without stuff that isn't good for them."

To the left in the lobby were the teller windows. The ladies behind the counter looked friendly. They even greeted by name several customers walking in. Straight ahead were the desks where visitors could get information, apply for loans, and open savings and checking accounts. (Actually, credit unions cannot offer real "checking accounts" in the sense that banks can; instead they offer "negotiable order of withdrawal" accounts on which check-like instruments called "drafts" or maybe ever "cheques" can be written, but that's a nearly moot point these days, so the accounts are called "checking" here.)

Aaron had already downloaded and filled out the checking account application form from the Website of the credit union, and he'd filled it out. This would probably help the people at the credit union know how great he would be to have as a customer.

A young lady sat down with Aaron, and the two of them talked briefly before she began to key the information from his form into her computer. She asked him for his driver's license so she could make a photocopy of it pursuant to provisions of the Patriot Act, and she asked him for something he'd received by mail to establish that he lived where he was representing he did. Aaron was ready with everything needed. The lady made the photocopies, pushed a few more keys on her computer, and shuffled some papers around; then she said, "I'll be right back."

"Ah, cool," Aaron thought. "This is where she goes back, gets the forms for me to sign, gets my temporary debit card, and all that."

Aaron sat there reading the brochures, looking around, thinking about which doughnut he should go for. He had glanced at a clock as the lady was getting up to go in the back. When he checked it again, a little too much time had gone by. It was only five minutes, but that was too long.

Mildly happy thoughts he had been tossing in his mind simply vanished, replaced with a spiraling chain of fear-driven observations and wild conclusions.

"God, what was I thinking, coming in here?... Security. That guy who casually stepped out of an office down that corridor. He's plain-clothes. Concealed carry. No, he won't shoot; doesn't have it in him, not without going all tunnel vision. He'd clutch... Lobby exit. Five seconds—tops—to my car. Broken driver-side door. Been that way for two years. Just jump in through the passenger side like always, get the keys in the ignition while I'm climbing across. Straight forward through the grass back out to the road... Look at those customers going up there begging for their money. Do they have any idea of how precarious this banking system is? Do any of them know what's going to... What in the God's name is she doing back there? Calling someone? Cops?... Did she give me back my stuff? Oh, thank God, she did. That was stupid of her. She wasn't very friendly... Doughnuts. I'll get that long one with the white icing on the way out... I need to leave right now. Here I am, sitting here like I think there's some chance this is all going to work out great. What in the Hell was I thinking coming in here?! Now I've gone and made a total mess for myself... I want to see my cat."

The lady returned with her paperwork. She sat down and started the routine: "Okay, we'll have you sign a couple of documents, and I'll get you some checks you can use here to withdraw money."

Aaron's head cleared instantly, "Oh. Well, when do I get a debit card?"

The lady didn't even bat an eye. "We're going to have you on what we call a 'restricted account' for six months. You'll have those checks you can use to withdraw no more than a hundred dollars at a time, as long as you maintain a balance of no less than three hundred dollars. Those checks won't be good anyplace else, of course."

Aaron was getting more focused. "Those are the 'cashing checks' listed in that brochure, the ones you charge twenty dollars each to cash, aren't they?"

She nodded: "Yes. As I said, we'll review your account in six months to see if we can take some of the restrictions off it at that time."

Aaron persisted: "So, I get no debit card, I get no checks to pay bills with, I get access to my own money only in one hundred dollar increments at twenty dollars per withdrawal, this credit union gets free use of my funds—no less than three hundred dollars of it at any given time—and I get no more than a promise of a 'review' a half-a-year from now."

"That's the best we can offer someone with no credit records for so long," she answered.

Not being given to lecturing people who can do nothing but carry out their duties according to the rules if they want to keep their own jobs, Aaron resisted his driving desire to explain to the hapless woman that even most religions no longer exact painful penitence from outsiders who want to join.

Aaron's short indulgence in hysteria had completely lost its irrational edge. Yes, once that lady saw his unexpectedly blank seven-year credit record, she followed procedure by going to the back where her supervisors were. She told the security guy to keep an eye on the situation, so even though he was able to see everything in the lobby from his security monitors, he casually came out to get a quick visual ID.

And yes, those people waiting to transact their business at the teller windows really are all suckers, standing like so many condemned in a slowly closing noose of a banking system that will progressively flow further and further against their interests and well-being in the months and years ahead.

And yes, willingly—maybe even a little excitedly—Aaron trying to join the milling masses of customers of the modern banking system was stupid, stupid, stupid. Everything about him that woman had keyed into that computer was now irretrievably passed into the ocean of information being collected, aggregated, and mined by all manner of governments, corporations, and other creepy organizations and unaccountable individuals.

Aaron knew better than to make any more fuss. "I do apologize for this inconvenience, but I can't accept these terms," he said, looking slightly down. Although he has aged—a few lines in his face and some grey in his hair have robbed him of most of the charm he once used to no small effect in turning people's hearts—his smile, the smile of a defeated child just wanting to go home, was still enough to prevail upon her to tear up the paper copy of the credit report she was holding.

"I really am grateful to you for taking the time to work with me," he said as he glanced up at her.

"Oh, that's alright..." she replied, cutting herself off before she reciprocated with the apology of her own she wanted to give.

Aaron got up and departed. He didn't take any doughnuts on his way out. Those are for people who can't live without stuff that isn't good for them.

The Dark Wraith hopes readers have enjoyed this story.

Special Analysis: On "Troop Redeployment"

2007-01-04T19:48:00.000-05:00

As the Democrats assume the mantle of congressional power, some within the progressive community here in the United States are calling for a rapid and complete exit of U.S. troops from Iraq. Described in euphemistic terms as "troop redeployment," this proposal has been advanced by some Democratic members of Congress, most notably those in the Out of Iraq Caucus, some of whom have called for an aggressive, 60-day timetable for complete withdrawal of all American forces.

Although a swift and total departure would, in many ways, be desirable, both Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword and I have commented on the historically well-documented potential of full-scale withdrawals for wholesale slaughter of the retreating troops. The idea that technology, force size, or any combination of those and other factors can materially affect what is evidently a persistent military phenomenon is dangerous when operationalized as the extent and substance of an overall exit strategy.

It was the neo-conservatives who believed that they could get away with and be successful in defying the body of war knowledge and the grave advice of the prosecutors of war, and they have been proven disastrously wrong. That is a cautionary tale for any military planner of any stripe in considering the odds of having military history not rear its obstinate head in a modern armed conflict.

As random, capricious, and senseless as war seems, it is a process subject to laws, principles, axioms, and theorems that are, in any given nation in any given era, at best only partially understood. To dispense with the precious shards of genuine near-certitude we possess is to walk a road to ruin—or, more to the point, to run a highway of redeployment to wreckage.

Full-scale retreat—and that's what we're talking about here—is very likely to result in a swift, appalling loss of life, both to American soldiers running the killing box corridors out of Iraq and to large numbers of non-combatants in the path of their flight.

Troops can withdraw in an orderly manner; but when they begin to panic under hit-and-run raid after bloody, hit-and-run raid upon their flanks and rear—especially with so many new American boots being pushed into the Iraqi sands by Mr. Bush's new "surge and accelerate" plan—panic will blow in, and that will set the stage for the bloodbath of a rout. Order and discipline evaporate into the overwhelming heat of desperation for survival, and the shattering columns become so many individuals waiting their turns to die, even as they furiously, then blindly, spray the land and sky with what remains of their ordnance.

No, we will not bug out of Iraq. The same generals who are now being set aside by Mr. Bush because they diplomatically tried to disabuse him of his "New Way Forward" initiative would have been the commanders steadfastly rejecting a wholesale pull-out of American troops, and such stance would have had nothing to do with the consequential fate of the people of Iraq, but rather with the American soldiers, whose security and safety take precedence over local concerns in matters of troop movements.

Mr. Bush is going to get his wish: we'll stay; and for now, not only will we stay, but he will escalate this American-Iraqi War.

And the Democrats will not cut off funding for the war. They're not quite so naïve, knowing as they do that, if they were to deny funds for military operations in Iraq, the very first people to suffer would be the GIs on the ground there. Right now, the Commander-in-Chief has lost the support of the soldiers, and that is extraordinary. But if that same Commander-in-Chief, a man given to straw man arguments anyway, is handed a rallying cry that his hands have been tied by the Democrats, those same troops who now disrespect him will turn ugly really fast, and their wrath will not be directed at their leader, but instead at the politicians who were obviously responsible for taking away their bullets and chow.

But far, far worse than that prospect is this: take away materiel and even food from a massive, in-field force of soldiers, and that force could easily, in the virtual blink of a news cycle, turn into the single most frightening beast that nature can muster from the howling depths of humanity at its worst. Strangle the Pentagon, and the Pentagon will pass the garrote right down to the GIs cooking in their miserable tents. Make those troops suffer like that and watch them turn into one giant pack of starving wolves. You want atrocities? You haven't seen atrocities like those committed by trained, desperate men with rifles and knives.

No, we'll stay in Iraq. We'll stay until we're bloodied beyond recognition of our hubris, beyond recognition of our preeminence, beyond recognition of our once unquestioned status as the leader of the free world; and then we shall leave. We shall leave, not when we want to, not when we need to, not when we've had enough, but instead when we are no longer relevant to the history of the future of Iraq and perhaps no longer greatly relevant even to the history of the future of places far from that awful land.

We may then come home to do our soul searching, our national finger-pointing, and our collective denial of that which we did and that which we would have done again were this not to have been our death knell as Empire.

The Dark Wraith has spoken.

"Surge and Accelerate": A Note on the Republican-Democrat Support Axis

2007-01-03T11:49:00.000-05:00

As President Bush prepares to address the nation to announce his intention to send 20,000 more American troops to Iraq in his "surge and accelerate" plan to turn the tide on the deteriorating situation there, criticism of what appears to many a counter-productive escalation of an increasingly unpopular war is mounting. Among the most vociferous of Mr. Bush's critics in the mainstream media is MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, who minced no words in his January 2, 2007, commentary condemning the troop surge plan. (The YouTube version of the video has been posted by litbrit of The Last Duchess on her site and cross-posted by her at Shakespeare's Sister.)

During his latest firey excoriation of Mr. Bush, Mr. Olberman took several opportunities to strongly criticize John McCain, who has publicly stated his support for the troop surge. A brief cut-away during Olberman's message showed footage of Sen. McCain standing at a podium with five other people. That film was shot in Baghdad several weeks ago during a congressional fact-finding mission. The still-frame below shows some of the participating members of Congress at a news conference held during the trip. Sen. McCain is at the podium making clear his support for sending more U.S. soldiers to the war-wracked nation.

The woman on the far left in the frame is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who aligned herself with a number of other Republicans in declaring her opposition to sending more troops to Iraq, although Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), seen in the frame immediately to the right of McCain, expressed both his shock at how much the security situation in Baghdad had deteriorated and his full backing for sending more soldiers there.

The man standing between Collins and McCain is Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who was quoted in a Washington Post article as saying, "We need more, not less, U.S. troops here [in Iraq]." In favoring the troop surge, Sen. Lieberman has distinguished himself as one of the few remaining ostensibly "liberal" or even "moderate" politicians in Washington publicly supporting what Mr. Olberman of MSNBC describes as a war initiated by a "...President [who] does not have any idea what he's doing - and [for whom] other Americans will have to die."

Given Sen. Lieberman's abandonment of the Democratic Party and his long-standing and very visible support for President Bush on matters of national security, the Connecticut Senator's alliance with McCain on escalating the American-Iraqi War may fuel speculation of a McCain-Lieberman "national unity" Presidential ticket in 2008, which would afford the American people a clear opportunity to elect yet another President and Vice President for whom other Americans would have to die.

The Dark Wraith will leave to readers such conclusions as may be warranted about Sen. Lieberman's continuing ties to an increasingly marginalized wing of the GOP.

Special Blog Post: A Realist's Best Shot at New Year's Wishes

2006-12-31T23:02:00.000-05:00

May your job last a few more months.

May your physical maladies be somewhat less than agonizing.

May the wind be from your back and not from your backside.

May your pets not eat you when you die alone in your home.

May you have few and relatively unobtrusive new liver spots on your skin.

May you watch hours of congressional hearings where Democrats pretend to have a spine.

May the emotional problems of your neighbors not involve you too much.

When you lose your job, may you discover that you actually like the flavor of dry dog food.

May you not be sitting on the john in a public restroom when the person in the next stall screams, "JIHAD!"

May your prescriptions cost less than your annual income.

May the disappearance of sensation in your reproductive organs not bother you too much.

May you not hear what kids say about how you smell.

May you continue to live under the illusion that you don't look too bad when you're naked.

May Bill O'Reilly not give out your home address on his show.

May the collapse of the banking system not happen right after your paycheck has been deposited.

May you not be rendered to a secret CIA prison in the Second World.

If you are rendered to a secret CIA prison in the Second World, may you be allowed a latte break each day.

May your dossier at the National Security Agency not be requested by Dick Cheney.

May your dossier with the Mossad not be marked "Pending Action."

May you not be stopped by a cop whose badge reads: "It's Giuliani Time!"

May the RFID chip you are forced to wear to keep your job not have electrical surges.

May the Chinese let you keep the clothes you're wearing when they call in all the debt we owe them.

When you pass through the machine that shows your naked body to the TSA screening guys, may you not hear them laughing hysterically.

May you not hear your surgeon say, just as you're going under anesthesia, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

May the administrative director of your region when martial law is declared not be Pat Robertson.

May the genetically modified produce in your refrigerator never say, "Feed me."

And finally...

May you be holding a giant banana cream pie when George W. Bush walks up to shake your hand.

And so, in summary...

May you have a Wonderful New Year!

Special Graphic Post: Justice, the Main Event

2006-12-30T23:51:00.001-05:00

This graphic may be reposted with attribute.

The Dark Wraith thanks the neo-cons for getting the ball rolling with the warm-up act in Baghdad.